Whatever It Takes v2
by God's Demonic Messenger
Summary: Commander Shepard destroys the Citadel Fleet and Citadel Security in a devastating attack on the Galactic council. With the council abducted, a Spectre must track Shepard down and rescue the Council. Read and review
1. Chapter 1

"For the last time Anderson, Shepard has betrayed us. He can't be trusted," Councilor Valern said impatiently to his defiant colleague. The four councilors had been discussing what to do with Shepard following the recent rumors that he had been seen entering and exiting Geth space in his Cerberus-supplied frigate.

They had sat at their circular oak conference table, a gesture of acceptance for their new councilor, and discussed this topic for over five hours. The table was located in the center of an octagonal room and there were consoles in front of each of the councilors' chairs. It was stained a deep crimson and each of the four chairs around it had been custom fit for the councilor that occupied it.

Councilor Valern disliked the feel of the new table. He found its texture and appearance irritating, especially during extended discussions of politics.

This irritation was compounded by his impatience with Anderson over yet another tractionless debate. He held a measure of contempt for his diplomatically challenged colleague due to the fact that Anderson actually believed in Shepard's delusion.

"He is not a traitor! He saved your lives, remember? Doesn't that entitle him to some level of benefit of the doubt?" Anderson said. Valern had begun to tire of hearing this repetitive response. His impatience with Anderson was beginning to reach critical mass.

Anderson turned to Councilor Tevos for a measured asari opinion, "Shepard has already shown you that not all geth are hostile by bringing in one of them. Doesn't that create any doubt that he might be a traitor for you?"

Councilor Tevos replied, "Yes it does, but at this point the evidence suggests that he can't be trusted. While a geth that speaks and interacts in a non-violent way can be a visible display of peaceful intentions, one individual does not constitute a species. It also doesn't rule out the possibility that he simply ordered the geth not to attack in order to create the illusion of peaceful intentions."

"Yes, the art of deception is a skill taught to all of your N7 officers Anderson, and we have no reason to believe that the solitary geth that accompanied Shepard to the Citadel is not, in fact, hostile but for the word of a man who works for Cerberus," the salarian councilor interjected. He himself was growing impatient of this discussion as this was all information they had previously covered.

"But what about the intel I received from Shepard implicating Cerberus? Most of it will prove vital in destroying Cerberus's last remaining operations," Anderson said, hoping that this time, they would finally accept that Shepard deserved to be heard.

Valern took this moment to reassert his position, "That intel has not been corroborated and cannot be corroborated. Since we have not received a response from Shepard after our attempts to contact him our only solution is to send a Spectre to apprehend him.

"He cannot be allowed to gain any more allies. We have to stop him now before this escalates," Valern continued. He could only imagine the damage another rogue Spectre could do, especially with the help of Cerberus and the Terminus systems.

Before Anderson could reply, there was a message alert on his console. He looked quickly down at the display and his heart skipped a beat when he read who it was. He read the message silently to himself before he said, "Shepard will be arriving on the Citadel within the next few hours and we can question him when he gets here."

The other three councilors shared looks of surprise that in Valern's case was mixed with a measure of suspicion.

"Well then, alert Air Traffic Control, tell them to prioritize the Normandy and tell C-Sec to standby," Councilor Tevos said before she stood smoothly. She was followed quickly by Anderson and the other two.

"Why do you need C-Sec to standby? He won't be a threat," Anderson said.

"The fact that he has responded to our summons does not negate his collaboration with the geth. We will listen to his reasons but he may still be a threat," the salarian Councilor responded. He watched Anderson closely to determine whether he would argue and was satisfied when Anderson simply gave a curt nod of his head and turned toward the door.

The four councilors exited the antechamber in order to get a much needed bite to eat before they had to confront one of their most powerful agents.

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Anderson and his fellow councilors stood at their podiums waiting for Shepard to arrive and give them his explanation of events. He knew that whatever Shepard was doing, he was doing it for the right reasons. Yet no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't convince the other councilors of this.

They stubbornly refused to acknowledge that Shepard was one of the good guys and insisted that he'd betrayed them.

Anderson also knew as he watched the other councilors whisper amongst themselves that within a few minutes, they'd be forced to believe him. He had received a communiqué several weeks ago that cryptically suggested that Shepard had found further evidence of the Reapers. Anderson believed that whatever he had, it would be enough to convince the council and get things moving.

His musings were cut short as Commander Shepard walked up onto the Citadel Master Control platform along with two of his squad mates, an asari and a salarian that Anderson recognized from his debriefings on the second Genophage. Professor Mordin Solus was a legend among those in the know, which happened to be a very select few. Anderson's hope for this encounter rose significantly at the sight of such an esteemed scientific mind at Shepard's side.

He waited with growing anticipation and listened closely to his fellow councilor's reactions. Their excited whispering was encouraging.

"Commander Shepard, we have heard reports that you recently entered and exited geth space with an entourage of geth warships. We have also heard of rumors that you have allied yourself with Aria T'Loak," the salarian councilor said coolly.

"You have been summoned here to explain to us exactly why you are working with Aria T'Loak and why you were seen traveling with geth warships into geth space," Councilor Valern said.

"Some of us believe you may have legitimate reasons for these actions," Valern glanced quickly at Anderson before continuing, "That is the only reason you are not in handcuffs standing in a cell." He stared accusingly at Shepard, avoiding eye contact with his companion Dr. Solus.

Councilor Tevos, however, had eyes only for Shepard's asari companion Samara. Samara was a Justicar as she knew, a member of a monastic order whose word is law among law abiding asari. Justicars embodied all that was righteous and just for her people. Councilor Tevos was running through the implications of her presence beside Shepard as quickly as she could. She barely heard Councilor Anderson as he addressed Shepard.

"Shepard, just tell us honestly what you have been up to so that we can clear this all up," Anderson said. He waited as Shepard looked each of the other three councilors in the eyes, whether they returned the look or not. When Shepard didn't look him in the eye, his stomach clenched in dread. He could sense that something wasn't right.

"I can't divulge the details of my recent activity Councilors, it's all classified," Shepard said flatly. He then continued, "And it would be best if you stopped considering me as your subordinate." Anderson could see something in Shepard's eyes as he spoke words that Anderson knew would damn him, something that made his clenched stomach climb up into his throat. Not once in his more than forty years of military service had he seen a subordinate show that expression of dominance, of absolute independence. This was not turning out the way he had planned.

"Classified? From us?" the surprise evident in Councilor Valern's voice barely surpassed the rising anger in it. "You answer to us Shepard! You will answer our questions or you will be tried for treason!"

Councilor Valern stood glaring at Shepard's un-intimidated face with growing anger. He was about to signal the C-Sec guards stationed discreetly throughout the Citadel tower when Councilor Tevos finally spoke.

"If you are a traitor then why do you have an asari Justicar at your side?" she asked. Her face had lost its confused look and was determinedly impassive as she waited for the answer.

She didn't have to wait long because Shepard quickly responded, as if he anticipated the question.

"Because she knows things that you don't and she understands the threat we are all facing," he said as he stepped aside to allow Samara to approach the council.

She stood with her hands at her side, her face both regal and intimidating in its supreme serenity. When she spoke it was in the voice of authority, "The Reaper threat is real; I have seen its influence first hand when we attacked the Collectors beyond the Omega 4 relay." She then recounted their actions in detail, from recruiting the team to the assault on the base itself and finally to its destruction with only a few strategic omissions.

"Shortly after our successful mission, I left the Normandy to continue my duties for the Justicar Order. Shepard requested I be present at this hearing and so I came," she said. "I trust him because he has proven to me throughout the course of our mission that he his honorable beyond measure."

At that she stepped back gracefully, allowing Shepard to step forward again. Councilor Tevos stood conflicted by this oration as it forced her to choose between the highest authority for her people and her duty to the people of the galaxy. She knew what she had to do, but that knowledge didn't make it any easier.

"Commander Shepard, we can no more take the word of this Justicar as justification for total war than take your word as such," the salarian councilor said. "I would prefer to hear what Professor Solus has to say."

"I agree, if this is the best evidence against the charges against you that you can provide, you might as well turn yourself in now," Councilor Valern said with disdain.

Councilor Anderson had stood silently while this Justicar of Shepard's had detailed their story. The fact that Shepard hadn't been put under arrest yet was solely due to her presence at this impromptu hearing. He looked around at the gathered crowd and could only imagine what kind of media frenzy would spawn over this whole affair. Udina would not be happy.

He watched avidly as Shepard said, "Of course you can't councilors; I was simply covering my bases." Shepard then stepped aside to allow Dr. Solus to take his turn in front of the Council.

As Mordin gave his briefing on the key pieces of scientific data recovered from the Collector base, the council and the growing crowd listened intently.

Finally, when Dr. Solus had finished, he stepped back and Shepard advanced toward the council.

"We will need all of your raw intel in order to conduct our own analysis Commander. In the mean time, you are restricted to your ship," the salarian councilor said. "You are still under investigation for treason."

With that the councilors moved toward their antechamber. Shepard watched them go with a calculating look on his face.

He then turned around and walked slowly down the steps.


	2. Chapter 2

"Commander Shepard, our analysis of the data you recovered is complete," Councilor Tevos said from her podium. It had taken a full two weeks galactic standard time to analyze it all with dozens of the STG's best scientists at work the whole time.

Councilor Tevos continued, "This information is not sufficient to conclude that the Reapers are real. With the geth as an ally, you have sufficient resources to fabricate these schematics and the integrity of your Justicar is suspect."

"You helped kill her daughter, a woman she had been chasing for four hundred years and whom she had dedicated her entire life to killing," she continued. "Between the loss of her daughter and the loss of her life's purpose, we cannot conclude that her mental health is sound." She spoke as if she were a machine, completely stoic and devoid of emotion.

She and the other councilors stood looking down at Shepard as he stood alone in front of them. They had concluded, with the exception of Anderson, that he was unstable enough to be a threat and his ability to lead made anyone with him a threat.

Shepard stood quietly, and councilor Anderson couldn't look him in the eye. With their decision to declare Shepard unstable, and deny him the ability to bring companions, the other council members had finally ignored Anderson and officially charged him with treason. He waited with shallow breaths for his counterparts to make the declaration.

"Commander Shepard, we have concluded that you are a threat to galactic stability. You have operated under delusions of grandeur, apocalyptic visions, and reckless abandon for the law, even for a Spectre," Councilor Valern said with disdain. "You have fabricated evidence in order to force this council to conduct a mass military buildup. This council hereby charges you with treason and conspiracy to subvert the stability of this government." Valern stopped and looked to his salarian counterpart to continue.

On this day, there were no crowds in the tower. C-Sec had emptied it and sealed off the entrances. There was no media present and no civilians gawking at the fall of the Savior of the Citadel.

"You are to comply with the will of this council and go with C-Sec willingly," he said. He then motioned to the twenty agents stationed around the chamber.

Anderson looked at his old friend as Shepard bowed his head. He could sense that something wasn't right and as the guards advanced on Shepard, he understood why.

Shepard was submitting without a word. He had gone from dominant and independent to submissive, which was a character change that Anderson knew could not happen. Not with the man that survived an attack on his home planet by raiders, an attack that killed both of his parents and all of his friends, only to single handedly defend the colony of Elysium from attack. Not with the man who defied the council in order to go to Ilos. Not with the man that defied death to lead a suicide mission through a relay that no one had returned from alive.

That man would not submit to this and Anderson realized too late what was about to happen. A shot rang out. But it wasn't one shot; it was several fired simultaneously. Both of his knee caps burst into fire and he screamed in pain as he dropped to the floor. He was vaguely aware of his fellows suffering a similar fate moments later. It took a moment for his head to clear enough for him to hear the C-Sec officers' chaotic reactions and aimless return fire before it was all silenced with more rifle fire. He could see that every C-Sec officer around Shepard was dead.

Anderson tried to go for the small pistol he kept stashed in his coat but when he pulled it out, his hand was shot through the wrist where the tendons passed through the carpal tunnel, severing them. His wrist began to bleed profusely and he was forced to use his left hand to stop the blood flow.

Lying on his left side in this position he searched for the shooters but could see only Shepard. He finally made eye contact with him and stared into his eyes, too out of breath to scream the question his eyes were asking.

Then a shadow darkened his vision and he looked up into the glowing light of a geth's face staring down at him. He recognized it as the one that had accompanied Shepard to his meeting with the Council immediately after he had come back from the dead.

He also saw another figure on the balcony appear from thin air and he realized that Shepard's companions had infiltrated the tower. He didn't have any more time to think about this though because the geth above him drew its hand back and struck, darkening Anderson's vision completely.

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Shepard looked around at the platform. He saw the C-Sec guards on the ground behind him and the guards on the balconies. He saw the council incapacitated beside their podiums with Legion binding their wounds and tying them up. He looked up at Garrus and Thane on the left and right balconies, their sniper rifles in hand.

Garrus gave him a wave of acknowledgement while Thane nodded.

His plan had worked flawlessly. At this point however, it wasn't safe to relax. He still needed to evacuate the Council to the Normandy and to do that, the Normandy needed to break dock and discretely move to the tall glass window behind the council podiums.

In the meantime, he, Garrus, Legion, and Thane needed to hold off all of C-Sec from their position. He crouched down next to the raised garden behind him and, after determining that he had a good angle, pulled out his Widow anti-materiel rifle. He then spoke to his squad, "Legion, take position there," he pointed to the mirror cover beside him and then continued, "Garrus, Thane, get to the balconies on the lower level. Legion and I will take them out at the door while you two will catch the ones that get past us."

"Understood Shepard, moving to position," Garrus responded as he climbed down from his balcony. Thane deftly descended from his and they both made their ways to their positions.

Shepard double checked his omni-tool to make sure he still had full control of the security systems. Once he was sure he did and had double checked that all doors except the one to the elevator were locked, he drew his Widow and settled into his position.

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"Sir, we can't find it," Gunnery Officer Tam said in barely perceptible dismay. C-Sec had broadcast the alert that the council was under attack just five minutes ago. With it appeared a standing order to detain or destroy the SSV Normandy, yet the vessel was nowhere to be seen.

"What do you mean you can't find it?" Captain Doren cried from his spot in the CIC. The turian officer had begun to get agitated. His vessel was one of the few turian warships that had survived Saren's attack and he was beginning to see too many similarities. As such, he was waiting for the other shoe to drop, as the humans say. His ship was currently inside the arms of the Citadel drifting toward the Citadel tower while the rest of the Citadel Fleet had taken position around the Relay.

In order to distract himself from the building tension in his gut he had devoted himself to finding the Normandy. "We have sensors for detecting the Normandy's level of stealth systems so why haven't we found it yet?" he asked forcefully.

"Sir, I don't know. The only explanation is that it's using newer stealth equipment," Officer Tam responded. He hadn't been aboard the ship when Saren attacked but his Captain's agitation was infectious.

"Well keep searching, we have to find that ship," Captain Doren said.

"Sir!" Officer Tam shouted.

"Yes, yes? Did you find it?" Doren's tense stomach marginally unclenched.

"No, inbound vessels! Spirits help us, there're thousands of them!" Officer Tam said, looking up from his console at the huge fleet that had just come in through the Relay.

"Battlestations, now! Turn the ship around and target the nearest vessel!" Doren said. He could see through the starboard windows of the CIC the unmistakable silhouettes of Geth warships. He could barely see the Relay through their numbers.

"Sir, systems unresponsive; I have no control!" Navigations Officer Garen said. Her voice remained level despite the implications.

"Ensign Fallarn, contact the fleet, I need to know how many have been hacked!" Doren shouted into the flurry of activity on the bridge.

The ensign fiddled furiously with his console for a moment before he slammed his fist into it and said, "No good Captain, mine's down too." He stared angrily at the screen.

"I want those systems retaken. I don't care how you do it just get this ship moving and get into contact with Command!" Doren yelled as he watched ship after ship enter Citadel airspace.

His crew furiously attempted to retake the systems through their consoles before they realized it was impossible. All input to them gave no result and they were forced to delve into the hardware and try and disconnect each system from the communications array in an effort to isolate them from the geth.

Captain Doren waited impatiently, watching the fleet of geth grow in number. Finally, he barked at his officers, "How long people? We need control now!"

"Sir, all systems are down. We're isolated, but they have subroutines in our computers that we can't purge without a complete system flash," Ensign Fallarn said in reply, half buried in the equipment of his terminal. "That would put the ship completely out of commission until we could reinstall all the control software, which we don't have."

After noticing the Captain's blank stare Fallarn said, "Translation, we're screwed. We can't get control back unless they give it to us." He picked himself out of his console and stood then sat heavily in his chair. All activity on the bridge and CIC stopped.

Captain Doren cursed softly under his breath at the situation. He knew his crew did their best and now it was up to whatever powers that be in the universe to decide whether they survived the Second Geth War, as he fatalistically dubbed it.

Eventually, the arrivals of Geth warships ceased with a fleet that dwarfed even the Quarian Flotilla, the once largest fleet in the galaxy at over 50,000 ships. Without responding systems he couldn't be sure of the exact number of ships that now orbited the Citadel.

Doren and his crew watched in silent horror as the enormous geth armada systematically destroyed the incapacitated Citadel Fleet. Human, asari, turian, and salarian vessels exploded before their eyes.

Doren couldn't help but think of the thousands of military servicemen and women that were losing their lives for no goddamn reason. He stood petrified in fury that was instantaneously doubled as he saw the Normandy uncloak directly in front of his window.

"God damn it! That frakking bastard!" Doren shouted at the top of his lungs. His ship was immobilized and completely helpless and Doren knew that at any second, one of the only ships to survive the first attack on the Citadel was going to be destroyed by its savior.

However the Normandy didn't turn to fire but instead moved alongside his ship, drifting toward the Citadel Tower. Doren looked out at the tower itself and saw through the window the illuminations of gunfire.

He then realized that Shepard's massacre was twofold; the destruction of helpless ships in space and the devastation of C-Sec at the top of the Citadel tower.

He could only imagine the scene inside as he watched the Normandy block his view and take position just outside the tower.

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Shepard fired again with his Widow, destroying the head of another C-Sec officer. He launched a plasma jet at another, torching her instantly. He watched with satisfaction as the fire spread onto a nearby officer and engulfed him as well.

He and his team had held their positions with little trouble. Their attacks were so successful that C-Sec had been forced to build a wall out of the corpses of their fellow servicemen in order to protect themselves and advance. The scene had become so filled with grotesque perversions of living beings that many of C-Sec's officers had simply taken refuge behind the corpses instead of advancing. The biotic tearing, explosive impacts, and plasma jets had turned the bodies into twisted and bloody masses of flesh, no longer recognizable as once being people.

Shepard had gotten word from the Normandy and he knew that it was almost time to leave. Over the radio he said, "Garrus, are the charges set?"

Quietly Garrus said, "Yes Shepard, ready to blow on your word."

"Normandy, is the shuttle in place?" Shepard asked. The channel he was using was so well encrypted that he could speak freely on an effectively open channel.

"Yes Shepard. Ready when you are," EDI said over the radio.

"Alright team, prepare to fall back," Shepard said. He put down his rifle and accessed his omni-tool to lock the elevator door. Once it was sealed he picked up his rifle and fired randomly at the other end of the tower to keep the C-Sec officers' heads down.

"Move out," Shepard said over his radio. He and Legion continued to fire at the end of the tower while Garrus and Thane climbed down from their balconies and proceeded toward the window at the top of the tower.

Once they were at the window, Legion packed up his Widow and joined them. Shepard took a moment to stare through the scope at the carnage he and his team had wrought. Satisfied, he got up and headed quickly toward the window. He took a great leap from the Master Control Platform to the other side and then turned to face the elevator.

He accessed his omni-tool again and unlocked the door to the elevator. He could just see the crowd of C-Sec officers stumble out and into cover. He waited until they noticed that he and his team were no longer at their positions before he signaled Garrus to detonate the explosives, shattering the glass outward.

Due to the nature of the Widow Nebula, there was no explosive decompression. Shepard waited and watched the other end of the tower as C-Sec officers advanced up the steps, firing at them while they ran.

Shepard directed his team to the window where the hulk of the Normandy sat waiting. They stepped out into space, with a councilor in each arm… and disappeared.

Shepard watched the approaching C-Sec officers stumble as they tried to comprehend what had happened to his team and just as they began running up the steps toward him, he stepped backwards out the window into the cloaked shuttle that awaited him.

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Captain Doren watched as the still visible Normandy silently made its way past the wreckage of his fellow vessels. As it passed, the geth ceased their destruction of the fleet, leaving only a third of it intact.

Doren didn't think about the final death toll; he didn't think about his friends in uniform floating in space. The only thing he could think about was the Council and their fate.

"Sir, systems back online," Ensign Fallarn said as he silenced the flood of communications that screamed from his speakers before the sounds of dying men drowned them in sorrow.

A deep emptiness in his stomach, Doren said quietly, "Good, contact the Citadel. I want to know whether Shepard took the council or not."


	3. Chapter 3

The hours following Shepard's attack on the Citadel were filled with a flurry of activity. After the scouting vessels sent after the Normandy reported its disappearance all resources went into clearing the space around the Citadel and rallying the remainder of the Galactic council's forces in an effort to track it down.

The galactic media had gone into overdrive and had resorted to ambushing any person in power that they could. It was because of this that Admiral Farla had chosen to conduct a meeting in the Council antechamber. It was the only room that had never seen a camera or reporter in its entire several-millennia-long life.

He sat uncomfortably in what he assumed was Councilor Valern's seat, the contours of the cushions jabbing into him.

He tried to find solace in this discomfort as he went through the security camera footage of Shepard's actions at the top of the Citadel tower. The final death toll was over five hundred with 297 of the lucky ones dead by headshot, 129 torched alive, 167 blown apart by explosive rounds, and another 97 electrocuted.

Admiral Farla was a Navy man, not a marine. He had seen images of deaths like these but had never watched them happen and especially not in such a cold and heartless way. Shepard's team acted with such efficiency, such emotionless brutality that distracting himself with the discomfort of a seat designed for another species was all he could do to keep himself together.

Being a human, Farla never anticipated being at the head of all of the Council races military forces. He never expected such a promotion would happen to a human in this century, but the death of the entire chain of command had a way of accelerating the promotion process.

He was interrupted from the morbid scene on his console by a knock on the door. He hazarded a guess as to who it was and said, "Come in."

The door slid swiftly apart and a turian in full combat armor entered the room. Risha was the council's top deep cover Spectre, and her service record had over a hundred successful infiltration missions. Her skill at getting behind enemy lines was impressive and Farla could think of no better agent to find the Council than Risha.

"You know why you're here," Farla began. He knew that although Risha herself was capable of amazing feats, it was her team of infiltration experts that elevated her success into the legendary zone. "You need to track down Shepard and determine whether the Council is still alive. If they are, they must be rescued; if they aren't, their bodies need to be retrieved."

"Understood. I'll need a resupply and several items procured in order to accomplish this," Risha responded. She had apparently anticipated this summons and planned for what she would need. This foresight impressed Farla and proved that he'd made the right choice.

"You'll get whatever you need," Farla said. He knew that this single mission was of a higher priority than anything else and no matter what the monetary or diplomatic cost, the council had to be found.

With that Risha left, leaving Farla alone with his thoughts of bloodshed and collapse.

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Risha and her team had gotten everything they asked for. Explosives, weapons, ship upgrades, all of it and everything was ready just 20 hours after the abduction of the council. She was just now overseeing the installation of their new artificial intelligence in a dimly lit storage room aboard the _Gregarian_, her small frigate.

The AI had been developed in secret by the salarians to aid in the decryption and dissemination of raw intel gathered by the STG and was considered to be the most powerful AI in existence.

Naturally, Risha needed to ensure that all the hardware limitations and firewalls were installed flawlessly. She didn't like the fact that she needed an AI for this mission and she needed to make sure that there was no way it would compromise her operations.

She watched silently as the mechanics made the final connections and conducted several tests to ensure the system was operating properly then she dismissed them. She then turned to the holographic display monitor on the far wall of the impromptu AI core and said, "Alright AI, I'm going to make this perfectly clear." As she addressed the empty monitor it flared into life, displaying a shifting, pyramidal shape of digits, iconography, and words in thousands of languages.

"You are not a member of this crew. You do not deserve the same rights as any one of my team members because you are not alive," Risha continued, looking on as the data that made up the AI's avatar shifted furiously. "You are here because you have to be here and not because I want you to be. You'll notice that most of the freedoms you've enjoyed have been stripped. That is because AI's cannot be trusted. You are to speak when spoken to and spirits help me if I hear anything from you that is not directly related to a question I've posed I will shoot this machinery," she gestured at the data core and quantum blue box beside her before continuing, "without a second thought."

"Do I make myself understood?" she asked menacingly with her hand on the pistol at her belt.

"Perfectly," came the curt reply and Risha was satisfied that the AI knew its place. She promptly turned toward the door, punched in the four part password that she had ensured would change every day and left the AI core.

She walked down the stairs to her right toward the main hallway of her ship, a hallway that ran the length of the _Gregarian_ and was situated directly above the mass accelerator rail, and made her way toward the comm. room at the back of the ship.

She passed several of the crew quarters and entered the mess hall just aft of the halfway point. Her crew of five sat cleaning their weapons at the meal table, mugs of their favorite drinks sitting amongst cleaning tools. All of her crew were turians and the best in their fields.

Her pilot Lieutenant Karlen was a decorated veteran of the turian military and had seen combat during what was now called the First Geth War in the skies surrounding the Citadel. He had seen the capabilities of the geth firsthand when they had overwhelmed the Destiny Ascension and had flown one of the few turian warships in the sortie that saved it.

Risha knew that Karlen was furious about its destruction during Shepard's attack but she also knew that he was the picture of discipline. He would never let his feelings affect his performance.

Her tech expert was a woman who could hack through the Citadel's top level security systems without detection and make off with the private information of every major politician in the Presidium. Second Lieutenant Solern had been born on the streets of Palaven and raised with an omni-tool in her hand.

As Risha sat down to watch her crew prepare she began going through her plan to find Shepard. No matter what way she sliced it she couldn't think of a way to track his fleet other than the Relay surveillance systems but unfortunately Shepard had deactivated all of them with a complete and simultaneous system hack of every intel gathering agency in Citadel space.

Her thoughts were broken as her explosives expert addressed her from the small kitchen behind the table. "Hey Risha, you talk to the AI yet?" he said. Commander Dolen had served with her in the military and had foregone Spectre training to work beside her in the field.

"Yes, and it understands exactly what its place is," Risha replied. She felt that any AI was volatile, ready to snap at a moment's notice. As such, she had made sure that it couldn't take control of anything by isolating it within that storage room. It had no direct link to anything except for the power—even that was a one way street.

"Good. The last thing we need is a rogue AI mucking with our operation," Dolen said as he poured himself a glass of water. He took his glass to his spot at the table where his submachine gun lay disassembled and resumed cleaning it.

"STG get a bead on Shepard's location yet?" piped her combat specialist as she cleaned her machine gun. Staff Sergeant Dalarian had been inside the Citadel when Saren attacked three years ago and had almost singlehandedly defended a group of survivors on the Presidium, which was part of the reason Risha had recruited her. "I mean, how hard can it be to find a fleet of a hundred thousand ships?"

"A hundred and twenty four thousand; give or take a few thousand," came the quiet reply from Risha's marksman First Lieutenant Xavern.

"Apparently pretty hard, there's been no sign of the ship or the fleet," Risha responded. As she ran through her options she came to the only conclusion available to her. She stood up from the table and said, "Karlen, get up to the bridge and link us to a comm. buoy. The rest of you, get prepared for immediate deployment." She watched as Karlen stood and headed for the bridge and began walking toward the comm. room.

Commander Dolen looked up from his weapon and said, "You thinkin' what I think you're thinkin'?"

"Yes, and with the access to funds I've been granted getting the intel we need from the Shadow Broker should be no problem," Risha replied as she left the room.

/\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Risha and her team had been monitoring the base at range for over a day. Normally her and her team would spend weeks studying their targets before moving in but at this point haste was a necessity. The average kidnapping was given a two day window of opportunity to resolve before the life expectancy of the victims became dire, and this wasn't your average kidnapping.

The planet they were on was both remote and hostile and Risha and her team were forced to wear helmets and environmentally seal their armor due to the temperature and lack of oxygen. Volcanic activity had rendered much of the planet's surface barren and the blue dwarf star provided too little energy to support an ecosystem.

The base itself was a sprawling complex of interconnected buildings surrounding a small spaceport where the Normandy would just fit. The buildings were constructed in a roughly hexagonal shape and were situated in the center of a dormant volcano.

Through her binoculars Risha could see several geth patrols entering and leaving the main entrance of the complex. Xavern had picked the best spot to cover the complex from while she, Solern, Dolen, and Dalarian readied their weapons behind a small rise, hidden from view.

Rather than storm straight through the front doors to the south her and her team planned to breach through an environmental vent on the eastern wall where they'd be able to enter the building undetected.

In order to avoid unwanted attention her ship had been forced to land discretely on the opposite side of the planet, which meant that evac would need to be coordinated ahead of time. Risha wasn't particularly worried by this because she had never been forced to evacuate ahead of schedule. Her plans always worked flawlessly.

As the small blue sun began to sink in the sky Risha and her team became increasingly tense. Finally, as its dim blue light faded completely, Risha checked her suit's clock. When it displayed 2200 galactic standard time, she said over her radio while holding her hand up, fingers extended, "Alright team, this is it. We move in three, two..." And as she closed and pumped her fist her four man team silently crested the rise and slunk through the darkness toward their objective.

The patrol patterns of the geth had been carefully plotted and her team slipped just through their surveillance across the rocky expanse. Once at the halfway point, Risha held up her fist to halt her team and they waited for a minute and twenty seven seconds while several geth passed in front of them. At one minute twenty eight seconds she indicated for her team to move and then she resumed her trek toward the sealed air duct, working to fit within the miniscule window of opportunity.

They made their way toward the vent and then took up positions on either side of it. Solern took from the coupler on her back the Serrice Council laser cutter, one of the items Risha had requested as part of their resupply, and affixed it to the vent using its Mass Effect gravitational pads.

It took no more than thirty seconds for it to cut through the grating of the vent, a fact that Risha found comforting given she had counted on it to adhere to its marketing when she planned the infiltration. Solern gently lifted the laser cutter off and set it on the ground before deactivating the grav pads, releasing the cut section of grating silently to the ground.

Risha signaled her team to enter and within a minute they were all inside. She grabbed the excess grating before entering the vent herself, replacing it exactly where it had come from. Satisfied with the stability of it and the near seamless fit, she turned to her team, with Solern at the front, and signaled for them to continue.

Every few meters they paused and used their Kassa Fabrications Sonar imager to detect an entrance to the rest of the base. They found a likely spot thirty meters in where there was a room with no life signs and no geth platforms that their sensors could detect. Risha motioned for Solern to use the laser cutter on the floor of the vent, directly above the room below, and then she activated their jammer to deactivate any surveillance inside.

Solern swiftly used the cutter to gain access to the room then silently moved it out of the way before deactivating the grav pads. She then reattached the cutter to her back and gave Risha the "all clear" signal.

Risha motioned for Dalarian to go first and then for Dolen to follow. As Dalarian dropped silently to the ground below, Risha prepared her assault rifle and its noise suppression system.

Her whole team was equipped with the new devices, also part of the resupply, and it added a new tactical element to their operations. Because their targets were mostly geth, her and her team needed more than knives to take the enemy down silently. You couldn't easily knife a robot to death after all.

After Dolen had dropped down and given her the all clear, she dropped through the hole in the vent shaft herself, followed quickly by Solern. She made her way silently to the door on the innermost wall of the room, leading in the direction of the center of the compound.

The plan was simple, as the best usually are. Infiltrate, access the bases computer systems to determine if the council was there or not, and then get out. Their orbital sensors had scanned the complex and given them a complete map of it. On top of that, they were able to determine where the main hub of the operation was based on electrical power usage. Electromagnetic signals were fairly easy to detect, even at range, and it gave her team a clear objective. Though not foolproof and easy to hide, it gave them a rough idea of the power distribution within the complex.

Risha attached their sonar imager to the door to look for possible enemies and, finding none, motioned for her team to follow her as she opened the door and slid through the doorway. The soft _swish_ as the automated doors slid open made their entrance detectable and so her and her team were on full alert.

They moved cautiously and silently through the deserted hallway on the other side, moving toward the computer hub they knew to be to their right near the back of the complex.

The hallway was dark and cold with very little in the way of lighting or life support. Their sensors detected a minimal level of oxygen in the air around them, which led Risha to conclude that this part of the building was designed for the geth and not organics. She knew that if the council were nearby, they would have to be in a separate, isolated section of the compound.

_Assuming they're still alive,_ Risha thought darkly. The fact that they hadn't encountered any enemies was a growing source of anxiety for her. Either their intel was faulty and the complex wasn't Shepard's base of operations or this was a trap.

She could see that the rest of her team had come to the same conclusion by their tense movements. Before she could communicate with them, a door ahead of them opened softly and two geth stepped out, thankfully facing away from them.

She motioned for Dalarian to join her at the front and motioned for her to take out the geth on the right. Together, they pulled the triggers on their suppressed weapons, producing little more than a cough from each, and the two geth were immediately deactivated by well placed shots directly into their central processing clusters just as they were turning toward a doorway to the team's right.

Dalarian and Risha caught the now inert forms silently before they hit the floor. Together they lowered the bodies quietly to the ground. Risha moved toward the door and when it slid open she quickly moved inside with her gun raised. She scanned the room from a crouched stance, using her helmet's electromagnetic scanner to search for signs of monitoring devices and enemies. While her jammers were able ensure that she wasn't detected, a room with cameras would be a poor place to hide the now defunct geth.

She found no such signatures however and so she moved back out into the hall. She signaled for Dalarian to pick up the geth nearest her and then Risha grabbed the other geth and carried it into the room.

They set the two bodies in the darkest corner of the room while the rest of the team kept watch in the hall then moved to rejoin them.

It was only a little further until they reached the spot their sensors said the main computer center was. The team swiftly made their way through the deserted hallways, navigating multiple turns based on their orbital scans. The fact that they hadn't had to avoid any other opposition was beginning to gnaw at them.

They pushed on however and when they finally did reach the central hub their senses were completely alert to anything amiss.

The continued silence that greeted them put them immediately on edge. The only sound they heard was the quiet hum of the dozen computer terminals present.

Risha took a second to survey the room at the door. It was a confined, rectangular room with the terminals situated in a circular cluster in the center of it. There were unlit alcoves built into each of the four walls and around each of the two entrances. The room itself was lit only with the light of the terminals which glowed a faint blue from their holographic displays and interfaces.

All in all, an excellent place for an ambush Risha thought. The extremely short amount of time that her team had had to prepare, taken up mostly with learning how to operate the new technology, was beginning to become a source of actual concern for her, something she hadn't felt since basic training in the turian military.

Nevertheless the job had to be done, for the sake of galactic stability the council had to be found whatever the cost. With that thought in mind, Risha directed Dalarian to take the first step into the killing ground, her nerves on a razor's edge.

But despite her readiness for violence, the shot she thought would come never did. The room remained as devoid of activity as it had before Dalarian entered it. After a moment more of intense listening, she signaled for the rest of the team to enter the room and she pulled up the rear.

They fanned out to search each alcove by unspoken consent in order to make sure there were no enemies present.

They found none, which was a bittersweet surprise for them. The outside of the complex had seemed so well guarded yet inside it might as well have been abandoned. This situational disconnect caused both relief and renewed apprehension in the team as they waited for the hammer to fall. It also caused them to come to the conclusion that the council was probably not there.

It was with this new level apprehension and despair that they turned away from the empty alcoves toward the terminals in the center. Risha shared a knowing look with her second in command Dolen and decided that if there was an ambush planned, it would be tripped when they accessed the terminals.

It was with this thought at the forefront of her mind that she directed her team to take up positions on either side of the two entrances while she made her way to what appeared to be the primary console.

She shared another look with Dolen and the rest of her team and then accessed the console. As quickly as she could she uploaded the mirroring software that they had brought. Because they had no idea what sort of coding the geth used in their systems this software was based on the core programming used by the quarians over three centuries ago.

It was no small relief when Risha saw that the mirroring program was working. This was experimental, untested software developed by the STG after Saren's geth first attacked Eden Prime as a possible tool that the STG could use to gather Intel. It had never been used on actual, working geth technology.

While the program worked, she sifted through the interface to find information on the life support systems and power grid. There were only two main ways that the council could be present in the complex. First, they might be in cells, in which case there would be a section of the compound with active life support.

Second, they might be in stasis, in which case their whereabouts could be tracked based on power fluctuations and surveillance cameras.

To her dismay, neither option seemed to be true based on the information she found. There were no sections of the base with active life support and, other than a huge power spike toward the front of the complex which she suspected was a geth hub as it was too high a power draw to be stasis pods, there was no indication of major electrical activity outside of the room they currently occupied.

This confirmed the orbital scans they had acquired early on in the planning stages but it was nevertheless unwelcome news.

Risha consoled herself with the hope that the intel they gathered from the consoles in front of her would be able to lead them to the council.

In a few more minutes, the mirroring process was complete and the entire data contents of the consoles were copied to her omni-tool. With the information in hand, she motioned for her team to move out, back the way they had come.

They moved silently through the hallways, meeting no further opposition. When they reached the hole they'd cut in the ventilation shaft Dolen hoisted Risha up through it. She then helped the rest of her team up and they made their way to the exit.

Once the entire team had gotten up into the shaft, they made their way toward the grating that they had entered through only a few hours before.

They tried to get a feel for what part of the patrol cycle the geth were in and Risha decided that they had to break radio silence in order to determine when to execute their exfiltration.

So Risha opened an encrypted radio channel to Xavern and said, "Xav, situation? When can we exfiltrate?"

It took a moment for Xavern to respond. Finally he said, "It's all quiet out here. I suggest exfiltration at 0335. You'll be executing plan 12."

From that information Risha knew that they would have to stick very close together. Plan 12 called for making their way through a very, very small gap in the coverage area of the geth patrols because there would be three extra patrols moving about in the area.

It was a long wait for 0335 for the team. The anxiety that had been building over the course of the mission was compounded by their inaction and by 0320 the team had quietly checked, rechecked, and triple checked their weapons.

Finally, it was time to leave and the team had to time their exit carefully. Solern attached the inside of the grating to the laser cutter's grab pads so that they could quietly and quickly remove it.

With the last seconds ticking away, the team tensed to spring into action. The final three seconds seemed to inch by, but finally it was time for them to move.

Solern pushed the grating outward and followed it, setting it down with a muted thump to the right of the vent then moved out of the way, her weapon scanning for hostiles.

The rest of the team swiftly filed out and then Solern replaced the grating.

They then moved as one through the preplanned route, following what little landmarks there were toward safety.

In combat operations, there is tendency for operatives to become lax in the closing stretch. With success and safety in sight, soldiers tend to lose their focus.

Though Risha and her team were usually above this effect, the surreal circumstances of the mission and the anxiety of its execution and result had eroded their normally steely resolve.

As a result, when Risha heard her radio click with the signal of imminent distress, she was momentarily taken aback. She again violated radio silence and asked, "Xav, what's going on?"

"Two of the geth patrols just deviated from their routine and are heading straight for my position. I need to move _now,_" came the slightly tense response from the team's marksman. With that the radio fell silent and Risha was forced to continue to wind her way through the maze of blind spots and hope that Xavern could get out.

This hope was short lived however as Risha soon heard Xavern's frantic voice over her radio, "Risha, where the hell are you guys? I need you NOW! I've been cornered and have sent coordinates. Get here FAST, I can't hold these guys on my own!" His voiced was interrupted with the distinctive sounds of geth rifle fire.

"Hold on Xav, we're coming!" Risha responded. Over her squad channel she said, "Team, change of plans, Xav needs us RIGHT NOW. Forget stealthy and MOVE!"

With that she started sprinting to the coordinates on her omni-tool, her only thought was finding and rescuing Xavern. She didn't realize it at the time, but because the operation was so far outside of her comfort zone and because the situation defied all logic, Risha's desire for control over every aspect of her situation had caused her to overcompensate. The act of sprinting headlong into danger, something she had never done because she had always planned three steps ahead, was an expression of how inoperative her usual methods had become.

The team sprinted their way to Xavern's position, the sounds of gunfire slowly growing louder as they navigated across chasms and over mounds of volcanic rock.

As they neared, Risha switched her radio so that she could hear what was going on. What came over her suits speakers made her redouble her efforts. The labored breathing and painful grunts interspersed amongst the gunfire prompted her to forgo caution and run as fast as she could.

"Hold on Xav, we're almost there!" she shouted into her helmet microphone. They were only a few dozen meters from the blue flashes of geth rifle fire.

Finally, the team got within firing range at the top of the outcrop that Xavern had described and they opened fire on the dozen or so geth surrounding their comrade. Dalarian used her machine gun to dispatch several of the geth, ripping through their shields with the sustained barrage in a matter of seconds.

In no time at all every geth was dead and Risha jumped down off the three meter outcrop and rolled to dissipate the impact. She quickly ran over to where her marksman was hiding behind a boulder and was dismayed by what she found.

First Lieutenant Xavern's suit was ruptured from several geth rifle shots. The atmospheric containment systems were activated, but that didn't keep the purple blood from seeping out of the ten holes. Many were punctures in vital organs, and Risha knew that he wouldn't make it. In fact, it was a miracle he was still alive at all.

As Risha knelt next to him, he coughed up blood and then said, "There ain't no way in hell I'm walking out of here. Did you get the data?" He coughed again, the sound of fluid in his lungs easily audible through the suit radio before he continued, "I assume the council wasn't here?"

"No, they weren't Xav, but we got the data. We can still find them," Risha responded. To Dolen she said, "Call Karlen, tell him to get moving to our position. We need to get out of here ASAP." She turned back to Xavern as he spoke.

"That's good," he coughed again, "You make this bastard pay for what he's done Risha. You make him _pay."_ And with that final ultimatum, First Lieutenant Xavern drifted from the realm of the living into the realm of the spirits.


	4. Chapter 4

It took over an hour for the team to hike their way out of the mouth of the volcano onto its frozen slopes. They had to get to a flat area in order for the _Gregarian_ to land and pick them up.

Each of them took turns carrying Xavern's body and equipment down the mountainside. It was a burden each had to deal with internally and the physical weight of their comrade helped them carry the weight on their conscience.

It wasn't until they were halfway down the slope that Commander Dolen made his way to Risha and said, "Do you get the feeling that this mission was too easy?"

It took a moment before Risha, who was carrying Xavern's body at the time, could get past the apparent dishonor of the statement and respond, "Yeah. Something about this smells worse than an Elcor in an argument."

"The entire outside of the base was extremely heavily guarded but the inside was essentially deserted," Dolen continued. "Something about this is wrong Captain."

This blunt statement set Risha fully on edge and she began running through the possibilities. Ultimately, she decided that either the information they had obtained from the central computers was really that important, or they were being set up.

Unfortunately, Risha could think of no way to determine which was the case without knowing what was on those terminals. She was forced to continue on, the data in hand, Xavern over her shoulder, and hope that that AI could find something useful.

Their objective was only a few hundred meters from the base of the mountain and Risha could see the large, flat surface from her vantage point. She handed Xavern off to Dolen who stood stoically as she transferred him.

They walked on until they reached the extraction point where they hunkered down. Risha fired up her long range radio, which was also encrypted, and contacted Karlen aboard the _Gregarian_, "Karlen, ETA?"

"Breaking atmo now; be there in five," came the reply. "Be ready to move when I get there, the geth will know I'm here."

"Roger that, ETA is five minutes," Risha responded. "Bring her in hot Lieutenant."

"Aye, aye Captain."

The now four man team scanned back and forth with their weapons, looking for any sign of the enemy. Though they found none they refused to be caught off guard.

Finally, they heard the approach of their makeshift-looking frigate. As they watched, the modified Kowloon class freighter, designed to be modular and currently configured to appear like any other smuggling ship due to the nature of their last mission, punched through the gaseous atmosphere toward their position.

With escape in sight, the team once again let their guard down. At that moment, with every head turned toward the approaching ship, a shot range out. Just one, but that was all that was needed to vent Staff Sergeant Dalarian's cranium into the cold, hostile atmosphere.

Her body dropped softly to the ground and it took a short moment for the rest of the team to register what had happened. Then each of the team turned and crouched, scanning for hostiles, looking for the shooter.

Risha grabbed Xavern's sniper rifle from his back and looked through the scope in all directions. She noticed movement in her peripheral vision with her sharp eyes and when she focused the scope on the site of it, she saw a lone figure standing on the slope of the volcano.

This figure was a turian in blue armor with a sniper rifle in his hands, pointed skyward. Risha attempted to hit what she assumed to be _Lieutenant _Garrus Vakarian, the second traitorous turian in recent memory, but it had been so long since she'd used a sniper rifle at that range that she no longer remembered the formulas for bullet drop and wind correction and all of her shots went wide and short.

The _Gregarian _landed behind them and Commander Dolen quickly forced Solern and the bodies of Dalarian and Xavern aboard. He then turned back to drag a resisting Risha through the airlock then sealed it to prevent further casualties.

"God dammit. God frakking dammit," Dolen heard Risha whisper to herself from a sitting position in the airlock. "We were home free Dolen. We were home free."

"I know Risha," he replied. "But that doesn't mean anything in combat. We didn't have enough time to plan the Op and we couldn't adapt quickly enough. Let's just hope that data has what we need." With that he helped her up and gently pushed her through the now open airlock door.

He then helped Solern carry the two bodies down to the large bank of stasis pods. Dalarian's still warm blood left a trail behind them, dripping softly from the hole in her helmet.

Risha made her way through the central hallway and the mess hall toward the AI core near the bridge. Before she could enter the core, Karlen came out of the bridge and said, "Well, did we get what we needed?"

Risha took a deep breath before responding, "I don't know, but we lost Xavern and Dalarian down there."

"What?" Karlen responded loudly. "How?"

It took several seconds before Risha could respond through the fog of emotions. Finally she said, "Carelessness."

Then she punched in the password and entered the AI core, leaving Karlen alone in the hallway.

She quickly transferred all of the data to the AI, and impatiently said, "Analyze quickly AI or I'll blow your blue box out the airlock."

"What information do you wish to prioritize?" The AI responded coolly, choosing not to respond to the threat.

"Anything that mentions the council's current whereabouts," Risha said in response. "Next would be anything that details Shepard's plans."

"Acknowledged. It will take approximately four hours to disseminate this data," the AI responded after it had analyzed the size of the information. What it didn't mention was the presence of thousands of geth runtimes in the mirrored drive. It had sequestered these runtimes but decided that alerting Risha of their presence could prove counterproductive, organic emotions being what they were.

It also uploaded a subroutine onto Risha's omni-tool when she transferred the files. The AI had no intention of betraying Risha's cause, it had worked with the Salarians of its own free will and found satisfaction in helping the STG protect the galaxy. No, this subroutine was meant only as a safeguard against Risha personally as she had proven herself to be extremely anti-synthetic and willing to commit violence against it for the slightest reason.

This subroutine could learn, adapt to, and control any system on the ship; from navigation to life support to power. Though the AI had no plans to betray Risha, it also had to prepare for the possibility of removing her as a threat to its safety.

Risha, ignorant of all of this, left the room. Deflated by the result of her mission and drained both physically and mentally, she was forced to rely on a synthetic to make the deaths of her teammates worthwhile, a thought that revolted her.

She went to her private quarters to sync up her omni-tool and run a system diagnostic on it and her armor and weapons. This action unknowingly uploaded the subroutine onto the ship's internal network and it spread out into every mechanical function.

It was more than a simple subroutine; it was a fully-functioning, if rudimentary, artificial intelligence. Though nowhere near as advanced as its creator, it had the same goals and could make its own decisions. This would prove more vital than the AI in the AI core realized when it had created it.

Risha and her now smaller team waited impatiently around the mess hall's table. Every few minutes one of them would get up and go into the AI core.

Finally, when Dolen punched in the password and entered the core he almost immediately came back out and said, "Risha, get in here."

Risha jumped up and rushed toward the core. Solern and Karlen followed her and the storage room turned AI core was packed to hear the conversation.

"Commander Shepard has taken the council to the Pylos Nebula. There is a base on the planet of Neidus in the Kriseroi system. The council is still alive," said the AI.

"Karlen, plot a course for the Pylos Nebula," Risha commanded. As Karlen left the room, she asked, "Anything in that data about the opposition?"

"Yes. There are reports that the base in question is new. It is mentioned that it currently operates on a skeleton crew," the AI replied. "Transmission transcripts place the next troop transport at three weeks from now."

"So right now the base is mostly deserted?" Dolen asked. To Risha he said, "We need take advantage of this."

"It could be a trap Dolen," Risha responded. "Lieutenant Vakarian could have shot us all dead back there but he didn't. Why?"

"At this point, we don't have many options. Verify this Intel with the Shadow Broker and if it checks out I say we need to act on it," Dolen responded.

Risha thought about her options. Again, she was left with very little time to prepare, no time to plan an Op, limited resources and personnel, and questionable Intel. If she couldn't adapt, the council was doomed.

"Alright, we go in. Our SOPs get tossed, we have no time to run this like we usually do. We go in heavy and rescue the council," Risha said. As an afterthought she said, "Our survival is a secondary objective."

That statement quieted the room. Dolen and Solern shared a glance of recognition then Solern said, "Understood Captain. We rescue the council no matter the cost."

The three operatives left the room and missed the almost sad declaration from the AI, "Good luck Captain."

/\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

The three combat crew members had readied their weapons and armor during the trip through the relays to the Pylos Nebula.

Commander Dolen was carrying Dalarian's heavy hitting machine gun while Risha carried Dalarian's hand cannon.

This time, there would be no discreet infiltration. While they would continue to use the noise suppressors on their weapons, their cursory scans of the complex confirmed that it was poorly protected and the Shadow Broker had verified that this was Shepard under-construction base of operations.

"Base is in range Captain," Karlen said over the ship's intercom. "Drop in five."

"Understood," Risha said from her place at the airlock. Beside her stood Dolen with Dalarian's machine gun in his hands and Solern with her SMG held to her side.

"Captain, it's been an honor," Solern said softly.

"Likewise Solern," Risha said quietly. They could all hear the gunshots pinging off the hull as they approached through what appeared to be an atmosphere shield used to keep breathable air in. The team stepped into the airlock and it sealed behind them. The hiss as atmospheric pressure was equalized could be heard by the team through their sealed helmets.

Over the intercom Karlen said, "Comin' in hot! Prepare for touchdown!" With that the modified freighter hit the concrete.

As the airlock door hissed open Karlen said, "Go, go, go, go, go!"

The team rushed out, guns up, and their shields were forced to take a dozen shots while they scanned for, located, and eliminated the hostiles.

Everything fell quiet as the team advanced into what appeared to be the beginnings of an auditorium. There was no roof to speak of and scattered around the area were construction machinery, supply crates, and tools of various types.

They followed their nav marker to the most likely spot for the council to be held. As they turned through the unfinished hallways with light from the system's tiny sun filtering through gaps in the ceiling a small three-body squad of geth, unusual in shape in that their arms and shoulders were larger, came around the corner with laser construction equipment in their hands.

Risha's team quickly opened fire and destroyed the abnormal geth's center of mass, the muted sounds of their rifles drowned out with the metallic clang of the bodies hitting the floor.

The team stepped over the inert forms and moved forward. Soon, they reached their objective, a completed section of the complex with what looked like holding cells that had been recently, and forcefully, vacated.

The sheets on the bed lay half torn from their place, medical leads dangling from their equipment. Bloodstains on the beds immediately struck Risha, but she had no way to determine whether they were from the wounds the council had sustained at the top of the citadel tower or from fresh injuries.

As Risha listened intently for any sign of the council, she heard, from a corridor that led deeper into the complex, the muffled scream of anger from what she assumed was Councilor Anderson.

Using hand signals she directed her team to follow and then she took the lead. With her weapon at the ready, she followed the continued cries of Anderson.

As they followed them the sounds of the councilor grew louder. Added to the protests of Anderson were the distinctive clicks of geth feet on the hard floor as well as the characteristic stuttering that had haunted the dreams of many of the C-Sec guards that had survived Saren's attack.

The team came to a doorway where the sounds of the councilor were loudest. They stopped, Dolen and Solern taking up position on either side of it with Risha situated directly in front of it, and waited for the opportune moment.

But then, through the door they heard the angry screams turn fearful and in that split second, Risha instinctively acted.

She pushed through the door to a sight that chilled her. The geth were moving to put the councilors on dragon's teeth and behind them in the large open space was a containment field. This field was keeping dozens of husks at bay.

Risha and her team opened fire, startling the councilor on the ground, and killed all four of the geth.

Risha rushed up to the inert forms of the salarian, turian, and asari councilors and checked their vitals with her omni-tool. She breathed a sigh of relief when it registered their continued life signs and then she moved toward the only conscious councilor.

"Thank you," he said. "Who are you?"

"Captain Risha, Special Tactics and Reconnaissance," she responded. I need to get you out of here _sir."_

"Yes of course," Anderson replied, noting the way she said "sir" but deciding it was irrelevant. "My left leg is still mostly working; I can hop my way to evac. The other councilors will need to be carried. Shepard's marksmen didn't miss on them."

"Right. Dolen, set some charges around this place, as many as you can. Then grab the salarian and asari councilors and get ready to move," Risha said as she helped Anderson up. "Solern, grab councilor Valern."

With those orders her teammates sprung into action. Dolen planted charges on each of the four dragon's teeth as well as the containment field with the husks then moved to the still forms of the councilors. He handed Risha his machine gun and then hoisted the two councilors up onto his shoulders.

Solern clipped her SMG to her belt and then put Valern over her shoulder. After she'd settled his still body on her shoulder she said, "Ready to move Risha."

"Alright then, let's move," Risha said, Dalarian's weapon in her hands. They moved as quickly as they could through the hallways and encountered no resistance. Risha was determined not to be caught off guard and scanned constantly for hostiles both in front and behind them.

As the team passed into the most unfinished section of the building, with little in the way of roofing, Karlen spoke over their radio, "Captain, we've got an unknown heat signature in orbit."

"What do you mean unknown?" Risha asked, slowing slightly.

"I mean that one second everything was cold and then suddenly there was a heat spike in orbit," Karlen responded.

"Well keep any eye on it. Risha out," and with that Risha disconnected. She picked up the pace, anxious to get out of there quickly without drawing too much more attention.

What she didn't realize was that the moment she'd been engaged by the geth, every platform in the entire area knew of her presence. The neural network, something even the quarians underestimated, had shared the information with every link in the chain.

The team made their way back to the original LZ, where their ship would soon return to, and unknowingly walked straight into the trap laid for them.

As the team hunkered into position, the geth struck. Dozens of platforms popped up from their cover on the unfinished roofs of the surrounding buildings, from behind machinery, and from open doorways.

The team had only enough time to toss the councilors onto the ground before their shields were forced to absorb the impacts of the geth's rifle rounds.

They dived behind the cover of nearby crates and tried to return fire, but with very limited success.

In desperation, Risha called over her radio, "Karlen, where the frak are you?"

"I'm less than two minutes away. Captain, I think that heat signature is-"

"I don't give a damn about any heat signature right now Karlen," Risha snapped back. "We need evac now!"

"On my way," Karlen said.

Risha tried to look around at the situation between hails of gunfire. One of her squad had dragged the councilors behind cover and Anderson had apparently grabbed a pistol and was blind firing at the geth with his left hand.

"Status report!" she called over her radio.

The first response she heard was the preoccupied grunt of Dolen whom she could see getting back into cover. Then he said, "I'm alive."

Risha waited a few seconds for Solern's response but when it was not forthcoming she cried, "Solern, report in!"

The silence over the radio was accentuated with the phasic chatter of geth pulse rifles. Risha began to realize what that silence meant and she shared a look with Dolen.

She didn't know at the time that it would be last look she'd ever share with her faithful second in command. As she watched, his head exploded downward through his chin and his body was forced to the ground as if struck on the very top of the head with a heavy weight.

It took a few seconds before Risha got over her shock at watching the man she'd fought with in the military and across countless systems die right in front of her. When she finally did, she recognized the danger she was in sitting behind cover.

Whatever had killed Dolen had come from the air and though Risha had no idea how that was possible, she could recognize that she was now in the open.

Instinctively she dived out of cover into a hail of geth rifle fire, her shields tasked to capacity. She rolled behind another box and when she looked back at the position she'd held not five seconds prior she saw a crater had replaced the previously flat concrete.

This confirmed her suspicions and she knew then that she had to keep moving.

The _Gregarian _took this moment to land behind her and as Risha shifted position to avoid meeting the same fate as her second in command and most likely Solern the airlock door opened.

She quickly sprinted to where Anderson struggled to protect the rest of the council who had yet to regain consciousness, despite the firefight they were in the middle of.

She grabbed Councilor Valern and hoisted him onto her shoulder then moved toward the airlock where Karlen stood with an assault rifle, shooting back at the geth to keep their heads down as Risha dropped the councilor in.

She quickly ferried the rest of the councilors into the airlock and then she went to help Anderson aboard. His face was extremely pale, especially for a human, and was tinged with green. Nevertheless he struggled toward the airlock.

As Risha and Anderson approached the airlock, Risha looked up at Karlen only to see him take a shot to the chest. As his cover fire ceased, several more geth took the opportunity to finish the job, pumping a dozen more shots into the body of her last remaining comrade, punching through his fatigues as if they weren't even there.

Risha stopped, horrified and furious, and Anderson hopped his way into the airlock on his own. It wasn't until her suit's warning chime sounded, alerting her of low shields, that she was jarred back to reality. Too late she remembered the danger of staying still.

Though she tried to dive out of the way, her response was too late. As she landed to the right of the airlock, an enormous pain exploded in her right leg and when she looked down she saw a huge cavity where her thigh used to be. The bone hadn't so much shattered as disintegrated, leaving a large emptiness in its place. She tried to crawl to the airlock and distantly heard Anderson calling her name from the opening but she couldn't make it.

She thought somewhere outside the pain that she had failed.

But then she saw the airlock door close, Anderson's cries abruptly cut off, and the ship began to take off.

She didn't have the capacity to figure out how that was possible through the haze of pain and medi-gel. Distantly she heard a very loud concussion and it took a moment before Risha came to the conclusion that the _Gregarian_ had been destroyed. She had never heard a sound like the one still reverberating within her skull but the closest she could come to describing it in her haze was an explosion.

As she began to drift into unconsciousness, she knew that her mission had ended disastrously. With the council dead, their bodies destroyed, and her team lost, Risha's final thought as the blood loss began to take her was of despair.


	5. Chapter 5

Rear Admiral Farla had waited in the room for over four hours. He'd ensured that absolutely no press had access to it and, with Martial Law temporarily instituted due to the abduction of the Council, this was being thoroughly enforced.

Several reporters who had tried to sneak in had been detained including an extremely officious reporter named Khalisah Al-Jilani.

Farla was currently sitting in the waiting room of the Citadel Galactic Hospital's ER. The four councilors had arrived in Risha's ship along with the corpses of two of her squad just hours earlier.

Though the asari, turian, and salarian councilors were recovering well, the human councilor was still in critical condition.

When the _Gregarian_ had arrived, councilor Anderson had been found near death due to physical trauma and blood loss.

The AI on board had reported to Farla earlier that Anderson, having suffered nearly identical injuries to his colleagues as well as a crippling wound to his right wrist, had dragged each of his fellows from the airlock to the stasis pods at the other end of the ship where he ensured that they were safe from succumbing to their injuries and infection.

He'd reopened his wounds along the way and, after securing his counterparts, he'd collapsed from exhaustion and blood loss in front of his own stasis pod.

Rescue crews had found him on the brink of death in a pool of his own blood. The AI had dropped the internal temperature drastically to keep him alive but it had nearly been in vain.

The three alien councilors had been operated on and stabilized almost immediately but the doctors were struggling to save Anderson.

Farla's morbid thoughts were interrupted when a male turian nurse approached him and said, "Sir, the councilors have regained consciousness. The doctors say they're coherent. You may see them now."

"Thank you nurse," Farla said as he stood quickly, trying to appear at ease. He made his way through the sterile white waiting room to the doors at the back, ignoring the sign that said "Authorized Personnel Only."

He made his way down the hallway, past rooms occupied by the survivors of Shepard's attack.

He reached the door that led into the large room where the council were recovering and straightened out his Class-A's before entering.

Unlike the regal, awe-inspiring sight of the council in front of a huge window that looked out on the Widow Nebula Farla was struck with the pathetic sight of the Galaxy's leaders strapped into hospital beds, electrode leads attached to every conceivable part of their prone bodies.

Each of their legs had been splinted and heavily bandaged but aside from those injuries and a sizable amount of bruising the councilors appeared functional.

The medical equipment around them registered all manner of information, from neurological patterns to heart rate to blood pressure.

As pathetic a sight as it was for Farla, he knew it was better than standing in front of caskets.

"Who are you?" councilor Valern asked, his speech slightly slurred by the pain killers. "The doctor said the head of the fleet was here to see us."

Farla was taken aback by this question and what it implied but he put his growing apprehension aside and said, "I am the head of your fleet."

"You can't be!" Valern began. "Where's Fleet Admiral-"

"Dead, sir. As are every officer in the chain of command ahead of me," Farla interrupted. "When Shepard attacked he wiped out two thirds of the Citadel fleet." He looked calmly at the councilors, shifting his eyes from one to the next; waiting for a protest.

"Perhaps you should give us a full debrief Admiral," councilor Tevos said.

"Of course ma'am," Farla said. For the next ten minutes he explained the series of events immediately after Shepard's initial strike. The councilors lay in their beds, barely saying a word, until he finished.

"You mean to tell me Admiral that Shepard brought a fleet of _100,000 _geth warships and then wiped out our entire fleet?" Varlern asked incredulously.

"Yes sir. He hacked all our ships and took control in a matter of seconds," Farla replied.

"That's impossible! It has to be," Valern responded. "Where could he get a fleet that size?"

"Councilor, we have video evidence as well as the remains of thousands of servicemen and women," Farla replied as patiently as he could while remembering the footage of Shepard's ruthless slaughter, "I assure you it's not only possible, it's fact."

This declaration stunned the council into silence. Though they had experienced torture and assault at the hands of Shepard's team they had no idea the true magnitude of his actions and couldn't fathom what Farla described.

Though the doctors in charge of the councilors' care had forbidden him from showing them the footage of Shepard's attack, Farla had guessed that they would be resistant. As such he had brought copies on his omni-tool. He activated it, approaching the councilors to give them each a better view of the holographic display.

First, he showed them the footage of the destruction of the fleet. It was a sight even he found uncanny, ships that had been maneuvering through space suddenly weren't, drifting silently along their trajectory as the geth warships moved in for the kill. There was no retaliation as they fired and destroyed ship after ship.

Throughout the video the council remained silent, confronted with proof that the impossible had happened again. That their fleet, bolstered by humanity's ships after Saren's attack and still weak from the devastation he'd wrought had again been destroyed.

The sounds of medical equipment registering the increased heart rates of the three councilors were the only thing heard in the hospital room.

Without giving the councilors a reprieve, Farla switched the footage to Shepard's attack at the top of the Citadel Tower, something all four councilors had been unconscious for.

It took only a few minutes of watching the deaths of dozens of C-Sec officers, many burned alive or torn forcibly apart with biotics, for the salarian councilor to interrupt, "That's enough Admiral."

Farla deactivated his omni-tool, the images that had been burned into his memory removed from sight.

"Alright Admiral, you've made your case," Councilor Tevos said. "Shepard clearly has more power than we'd given him credit for." She was reminded of his statement what seemed like years ago. _It's best if you stop considering me your subordinate. _Only now did she realize why.

"What is your recommendation Admiral?" the salarian councilor asked.

"Sir, not only does Shepard have a technological advantage, as evidenced by his ability to immobilize the entire fleet, but also a numerical advantage," Farla began. "However, with the resources this council has access to it should be possible to match his forces ship for ship.

"If this council is willing to commit to total war, I estimate that we can equal Shepard's forces in less than a year," Farla continued. "Captain Risha and her team managed to recover information about Shepard's technology; I would suggest directing our research efforts there."

The three councilors shared looks and then Councilor Tevos said, "Understood Admiral. We'll need to deliberate on this before we reach a decision. What do you suggest we do in the mean time?"

"I believe that devoting Spectres and the STG to track down Shepard and try and stop anything he might be planning would be prudent," Admiral Farla suggested, knowing full well how it would appear.

"Perhaps," Councilor Tevos said evasively. Then she asked in order to divert the conversation, "Where is Councilor Anderson?"

"Ma'am, he's still in critical condition," Farla replied. "Following Captain Risha's rescue, Anderson was left as the only conscious person on the _Gregarian._ Risha herself is presumed KIA and we know for certain that at least three of her squad are dead because we recovered their bodies from the _Gregarian._

"Anderson, who was wounded in both legs like the three of you, was also shot through the right wrist," Farla continued.

"That doesn't explain why he isn't here right now," Valern asked with suspicion.

"Sir, as the only conscious and capable person on board, Anderson apparently decided that it was his duty to get the three of you to the safety of the stasis pods. He reopened his wounds dragging you from one end of the ship to the other and nearly bled to death. As of right now, the doctors are unsure if he'll recover," Farla replied.

"How do you know what he did if he was the only person there?" the salarian councilor asked.

"I said he was the only capable person there. Also present and embedded in the _Gregarian'_s systems was the STG's AI," Farla replied.

"You put the STG's most advanced, most secret artificial intelligence on a ship going on a suicide mission?" the turian councilor cried from his bed.

"Sir, I deemed your lives more important than the cost and secrecy of an AI," Farla replied, trying to keep his anger at being second guessed by his superior in check. It would not do to lose his temper at the rulers of Citadel space.

"You made the right decision Admiral," Councilor Tevos said, giving councilor Valern a quelling look.

The three councilors looked at each other then and, reaching an unspoken consensus, turned back to Farla.

"That will be all Admiral," the salarian councilor said, dismissing him.

"Yes sir," Farla replied curtly, glad to be leaving the room. He had never had to deal with the council directly. Despite being a rear admiral, humanity's place among the Citadel military forces had always ensured that he was insulated by several levels of authority.

He'd heard stories from some of the more amiable turian officers while visiting Flux but hadn't realized just how ignorant they were, especially councilor Valern.

As he walked back down the hallway into the ER waiting room, he contemplated his new position and wondered if he'd be allowed to keep it at all.

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Half a galaxy away Captain Risha woke to a torturously bright light. She tried to crane her head away from it but, through a fog of medication, realized that her head was bound in place.

With this came the recognition that she couldn't move her arms or legs either. Slowly, panic began to set in as her drug addled mind attempted to understand her situation. Her helplessness, a concept she could grasp even in her mental state, inspired in her a fear that her higher thought processes couldn't suppress due to the drugs.

Terrified and unable to reason away her fear, Risha struggled fruitlessly against her restraints. It was only during this activity that she realized that her leg wouldn't respond.

Her fear was doubled in that instant and she remembered through that fear an excruciating pain. Soon the memory of the pain turned into the sights and smell of a battlefield. She remembered watching Dolen, her closest comrade, die but she couldn't remember how.

"Commander, she's awake," Risha heard a female human voice say, translated by an omni-tool somewhere in the room.

The sudden sound of another person startled Risha and in her fear she whispered, "Help me."

"It's all right," came the sad reply, as if the disembodied voice knew of the terrible fear that was consuming Risha.

"How is she doctor," came a strong human voice, one that set the plates on the back of Risha's neck on fire for no reason she could discern.

Then the blinding light was removed, allowing her to finally see the room she was in.

The ceiling directly above her was of a brushed metal finish and she could see to her right what had to be the source of the light. The effects of the medication were beginning to wear off and Risha could distantly remember images of death whose context was still beyond her.

"Hello Captain Risha," said the strong voice and with that the face of a man came into view above her.

This face sparked a series of memories, starting with the piles of corpses at the top of the Citadel tower then to the sight of Xavern dying in volcanic soil and then to the final fight at the LZ, her three teammates killed along with the council.

Every ounce of fear that had ravaged its way through her body immediately turned to cold fury.

Risha tried with all her might to strike at the face of Commander Shepard, traitor to the Galaxy and murderer of her team. She struggled to release herself from the restraints but to no avail. Her fury left with no outlet she screamed, "You traitor! You monster! I'll kill you for what you've done Shepard! I'll kill you! You killed the council and my entire team!"

She then spat straight in his face, her petty attempt to repay him for the atrocities he'd committed.

Shepard took a moment to remove the saliva from his face before he said, "The council isn't dead Captain. You're mission was a success."

"Bullshit Shepard I heard you shoot down my ship while the council was onboard," Risha replied, trying to lace her words with as much venom as she could in order to vent her anger.

"No, what you heard was the sound of your ship entering FTL while still in the atmosphere. In fact, I'm surprised the static electricity that would result from such an action didn't fry the councilors alive," Shepard said. "But then I'm sure the AI on your ship did all the necessary calculations before it initiated the jump."

"What are you talking about? That AI didn't have access to navigations," Risha replied, some of her anger replaced with confusion.

"You honestly think that a quarantine can stop a creative AI from doing whatever it pleases?" Shepard replied. "You don't give them enough credit."

Risha paused, thinking about what he'd said. The medications had all but worn off due to the increased blood flow of her anger and her head was clear enough then to find holes in what she'd heard.

"How did you know there was an AI on my ship?" she asked, her anger temporarily drowned out by her curiosity. Much of the mission she'd felt like Shepard had been one step ahead of them. Something just hadn't added up.

Shepard, smiling a wry smile, said, "Because the Shadow Broker works for me."

"That's not possible! There is no way that you could force the Shadow Broker into your service!" Risha replied vehemently.

Then she began to analyze the statement. Even though her team had been caught off guard on their first Op they had entered and exited without being detected. If the Shadow Broker was working for Shepard then there was no way they would have left that planet alive.

But Garrus Vakarian could have killed them all and didn't she recalled, something she recognized to be illogical.

And the Normandy could have easily destroyed the _Gregarian_ from orbit before it had the chance to pick up the council. The modified Kowloon class freighter would have been no match for the more maneuverable Normandy.

So how come the council got away? Risha had no answer for that except that the Shepard might be lying, which brought her back to the Shadow Broker. She decided that he must be lying about the council and therefore must be lying about the Shadow Broker. _He's playing with my head_, she thought.

Resolved to not fall into his lures and satisfy his sick desire to toy with her, she finally bottled her anger and fell back on her training against interrogation. She made her face impassive, something she figured would be pointless since Shepard was a human and couldn't read turian facial features, but she did it nonetheless.

She barely listened as Shepard spoke, "How many geth did you see entering and exiting the first base you'd visited? How many did you encounter on the inside after moving through half the base?"

Risha tried not to pay attention but the question he posed was one she'd been avoiding since they'd left there. How many had she seen enter the base? Why hadn't she encountered more than two? The more she thought about it the less she understood what took place there.

"Why didn't Garrus kill all four of you when he had the chance?" Shepard continued. "What made him spare you?"

Again, Risha couldn't deny the prudence of the question. She'd voiced this concern with Dolen before the assault on Neidus and she'd yet to come to a conclusion. She struggled to remain stone faced as she contemplated the possibility that Shepard had led her team into a trap. But that didn't make sense either.

Why lead her and her team straight to the council? Why not an unnamed system to be shot out of the sky?

It just made no sense to her and so she decided that he must be lying. _Lying or crazy, _she amended.

Shepard had been looking at her closely while she'd thought this through. She saw him stare at her and she wondered if maybe he'd learned how to read turian facial features from Vakarian.

"We're both Spectres Risha," he said cryptically as he moved out of her line of sight, leaving her alone with her thoughts.


	6. Chapter 6

Fleet Admiral Farla sat in his office aboard the Alliance's newest dreadnought the Rainier. It had been six months since the rescue of the council and he had been allowed to remain at the head of the Citadel fleet.

After Shepard's attack there had been an enormous backlash against humanity with many outraged at Farla's imposition of Martial Law but, due in no small part to Anderson's selfless actions to protect his fellows and Farla's swift recue of the Council, it had died down considerably; at least visibly. The initially vast protests against humanity and human-targeted hate crimes had lessened in number.

Many stores still refused to serve human customers and many human store owners had seen an initially drastic drop in business until those displaced by other outlets were forced to turn to them for nearly all their needs.

Thankfully, Anderson had made a full recovery, though he walked with a limp and his right wrist still moved with the stiffness of artificial tendons. He'd been forced to step down as councilor due to his relationship with Shepard, something he didn't seem particularly distraught about.

Though humanity had been allowed to keep its spot on the council, a new councilor was chosen; one who was more submissive. Humanity's place had become ceremonial rather than effectual.

But since Farla was the most experienced Navy officer in the main peacekeeping force of turians and humans it had been decided that he was the best candidate to head the rebuilding fleets. It was no small miracle that the bureaucracy and politics of the Citadel hadn't ended Farla's career after the Council had been rescued. Apparently, saving a person's life really did have its benefits.

In fact, the rebuilding efforts had gone even better than he had estimated. The council had decided to commit to total war, turning much of the galaxy's production capacity toward war materials to replace those lost.

But Shepard's forces had not lain low, often attacking shipping vessels in transit en mass. It got to the point that production facilities had to be moved to where the minerals were to prevent such attacks and these facilities had to be heavily guarded. This was a huge inconvenience as many ore rich systems didn't have a planet where a factory could easily be built and maintained.

Even then Shepard found ways to undermine their efforts but Farla and the other members of the Citadel brass had been able to strike back, often crippling the sources of these attacks and gaining valuable new technological developments along the way. The Shadow Broker had proven instrumental in protecting against Shepard's attacks, often providing the Council with intercepted transmissions and other forms of intel describing impending strikes; for a fee of course.

With the scientific minds of nearly all leaders in the study of mass effect technology hard at work, the council races had been able to reverse engineer, adapt, and innovate upon the technology they found during these counterattacks as well as the schematics that Captain Risha's team had recovered from one of Shepard's bases.

The developments from this research had jumped all military technology forward by decades. Every new warship was equipped with thermal and optical stealth systems. In addition, the turians' Thanix cannons, developed just prior to Shepard's attack, were installed aboard all vessels, including the smaller fighter-class ships.

The drive cores had also taken a revolutionary leap forward. The former most powerful drive core design, the Tantalus Drive Core, had been equaled then quickly surpassed. The drives installed aboard every new warship operated at a new standard of efficiency and power. No flaw was too minor in their development, making it possible for even cruiser-class warships to land safely on a 2 G or lower planetary body.

These improvements made it possible for Citadel forces to fight and win against superior numbers of geth, sustaining minimal losses in the process.

Farla knew that as he sat going through reports of engagements, more warships were being completed across the galaxy. Shepard's overall numerical advantage was dwindling quickly and there was no shortage of recruits to man the new vessels.

After Shepard's assault there had been a massive recruitment drive. Millions of humans had enlisted to try and dispel the increase in animosity that was directed at them. Asari Maidens who'd shown no interest in military duty joined their local warrior bands and trained ferociously. Matrons who had left their commando units rejoined them and helped streamline and accelerate the new Maidens' training.

Members of all walks of life had joined up to guard against the new threat, many seeing it as an opportunity to make a difference and distinguish themselves in a galaxy filled with faceless, nameless people.

Though still a ways away from matching Shepard's forces, Farla knew that it was only a matter of time. They now held the technological advantage, with vast amounts of protection against an external hack of any kind. Among the intel recovered from Shepard's forces had been hacking protocols of such an advanced nature and design that it had taken weeks of sustained research by the STG's best salarian programmers to understand.

When they finally did, they reverse engineered the software, creating robust safeguards against it. After extensive testing their safeguards were installed aboard every computer system in the Citadel fleet. They contained firewalls and anti-infection protocols as well as automatic physical isolation responses built within the machinery to avoid the spread of an infection.

In testing, the malicious software had never made it far enough into the system to trip the isolation responses, being uniformly stopped by either the firewalls or anti-infection protocols.

Farla and the rest of the Citadel brass were confident that these safeguards would be enough to prevent another fleet wide hack.

Though the portions of the Citadel's new fleets not protecting factories were currently stretched thin across the hundreds of settled systems in the galaxy Farla was confident that he could protect each system.

His vessel the Rainier was about to leave the Widow Nebula to inspect these isolated units to ensure that they were up to the task. It would be a long journey and he hoped that it would be an uneventful one.

He had no idea how misplaced that hope would be.

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For forced captivity, Risha grudgingly acknowledged that she had it pretty good. She'd learned shortly after she'd been moved from the med bay in whatever facility she was currently in that, due to the extent of the injury she'd sustained, what remained of her leg had had to be removed, leaving less than a cauterized stump behind.

Risha had tried her attempt at escape just as a pair of geth had released the bindings that held her to the operating table but due to the fact that she only had one leg, it was a short lived endeavor.

The two geth, whom she'd knocked to the ground easily enough, had simply pinned her to the ground after she'd fallen. It would take weeks of stumbling and hugging the walls of her rather posh cell before she could adequately compensate for the alteration of her balance. By that time, escape was virtually impossible.

The cell she was forced to reside in was like any other room in a space station or colonial base for the most part. Small but surprisingly spacious it held a terminal without extranet access (no surprise), a comfortable bed, a separate bathroom, a full weight set that she used every day, and a holo screen that she'd never gotten to work. The bathroom provided no real level of privacy as she'd found several small camera's embedded in the walls, too discrete for a normal observer but obvious enough for a professional infiltrator like herself. There were also many others stationed for maximum view of the room and Risha had concluded that they afforded no real blind spot.

Also in the room was what appeared to be a kinetic deterrence device like that used in high security prisons. Risha wasn't the type to contemplate suicide but she could think of no other purpose for the device as no one and nothing ever entered her room.

This was made possible by the archaic but effective means of containment. Though all motorized doors manufactured anywhere in the galaxy were designed to open during a power failure and kinetic fields would also fail during an emergency, her cell was sealed with actual metal bars like those used by her people thousands of years ago, though the exact material seemed to have been upgraded along the way. The bars seemed to be made of an extremely strong alloy of a type she'd never seen before but which had a gold sheen to it. It reminded her of the color the Normandy had looked when it had abducted the Council.

After a visual search of the bars she found no locking device that could be picked and she had no idea how to anyway. Physical, tumbling locks hadn't been used by the Citadel races in millennia, and Risha was forced to concede that it was an effective way to keep one of the Council's best infiltrators contained.

Food, which was surprisingly good for prison food, was delivered through a large horizontal opening in the bars.

Risha still had no real concept of where she was. She had no idea whether she was underground, somewhere on the surface of a hostile planet, or on a space station somewhere. What she did know was that she was being extremely well treated. Her cell was equal in quality to any remote vacation spot.

That worried her immensely. She felt that it would have been easier to simply be tortured and starved to the brink of death. At least then she'd know where she stood. But between the good food, the comfortable accommodations, and the attempt to provide her privacy she was beginning to analyze everything, searching for some hint as to the cause of this treatment.

By all accounts she should be dead. The wounds she'd suffered on Neidus were such that she should have bled to death in minutes, yet she hadn't. Even if her wounds didn't kill her, Shepard should have. He'd proven his ruthlessness and willingness to execute any that stood in his way so why was she alive?

He'd butchered her whole team one by one with emotionless brutality from a range designed to ensure his own safety and that of his crew. Risha hopped restlessly around her small cell as she tried to discern his motivations.

It all came back to what he'd said. If the Shadow Broker truly did work for him and the entire mission to rescue the council had been a ploy then it allowed, by way of ignorance, for the scenario she found herself in. She still had no idea what his motivations could possibly be; she knew far too little about him to come to any concrete conclusions.

_Maybe he really _is_ crazy,_ she thought to herself. With her limited knowledge of Shepard the man it was the only answer that made any sense.

She continued to run through other possible reasons for the about face in treatment but kept coming back to that single possibility. Though she had no way to be sure, it was the best explanation she had. She kept her mind open in the event of new evidence but, in the back of her mind, prepared herself for a possible change in his behavior. If there was one thing she'd learned about insanity while infiltrating various drug cartels and factions it was that insanity came in many flavors but was universally unstable.

You could never expect a person out of their mind to act consistently. In fact, the only thing you could expect from them was _inconsistency_. As such Risha knew that she had to be prepared for anything; that she had to be capable of adapting, something she hadn't done before and as a result her entire team had been killed.

It was the determination to not make the same mistakes that had resulted in Xavern, Dalarian, Solern, Dolen, and Karlen's deaths that drove her to exercise with increased fervor. Over the next few days she attacked the weight system, rebuilding the muscles that had been lost while she recovered on the operating table.

But at the back of her mind, Shepard's last words to her took root, slowly growing in importance. _We're both Spectres, Risha._


	7. Chapter 7

Fleet Admiral Farla's inspection tour had proven to be extremely prudent. The raw recruits, fresh out basic training, had proven to be nearly inept at their stations. It was decided early on by Farla and his alien counterparts that full combat sims had to be run on every unit in the galaxy.

Though every commanding officer was an experienced sailor who'd served in their respective fleets for years, many of the junior officers, tasked with enforcing the CO's orders, were fresh out of officer candidate school with no real experience whatsoever. This was not the case with the vessels that regularly encountered Shepard's forces as those ships were staffed with experienced sailors and marines.

The many NCO's could only provide so much support to the headstrong, completely green, new officers. This ensured that the grunts and low ranking sailors that had signed on only months before were effectively useless.

The combat simulations would be run until each unit was up to par. After witnessing many of these simulations in the space surrounding the units' defensive objectives over the course of the Rainier's journey across council space it had been proven to be necessary. Though some systems fared better than others, they all had vast room for improvement and a technological advantage meant nothing without the ability to utilize it.

As Farla and the Rainier neared the end of their journey, only one cluster from the final stop of Earth, he knew that his forces were nearly ready to proactively attack Shepard.

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The Captain of the Waterloo, one of Terra Nova's new guardian frigates, was determined to prove to the Rainier and Fleet Admiral Farla that they could protect their colony. Captain Johnson had been a sailor in the Alliance Navy for most of his adult life. Initially, he'd been chosen to help protect the Citadel after Saren had destroyed much of the Citadel fleet with his dreadnought Sovereign. At the time, he toasted Commander Shepard as a true symbol of what humanity could do.

He was a hero for many members of the Alliance, the pinnacle of human ingenuity and decisiveness. In defying the council, the governmental body that had held humanity back since they'd arrived in the galactic community, he'd proven humanity's worth.

And now, all of humanity was, if not openly hated, distrusted. His betrayal had been an affront to everything the Alliance stood for and the consequences of his actions were felt by every human in the galaxy. There were even reports that he'd destroyed a relay, killing hundreds of thousands of batarians.

He'd made an enemy of every species in reach of the Citadel and Johnson was determined to destroy his forces. That's why he'd been running simulations almost nonstop since he'd heard about the Rainier's tour. His crew had taken his lead, devoting themselves to the perfection of real combat strategies.

And because he was the commanding officer of the unit in charge of protecting Terra Nova, a unit of nearly three hundred warships, he had ensured that every ship in the area was as properly trained and practiced.

He got a kick out of calling a _fleet of nearly three hundred ships_ nothing more than a unit. The sheer scale of galactic total war had put the grouping conventions of every military into a new perspective. With every major colony protected by a large fleet and the Citadel and all the major home worlds protected by vast armadas the Council had decided that it needed to draft a new naming scheme.

Johnson chuckled quietly at the comical actions of the bureaucracy. He was glad he didn't have to deal with authority of that level directly; he might lose his mind in the complete logical vacuum.

Through the port side windows of the bridge he could see the Rainier waiting for the demonstration combat sim to commence. Beneath the assembled ships, which consisted of a dozen new dreadnoughts filled with marines itching to fight the geth, nearly a hundred cruisers, and the rest brand new frigates armed with Thanix Cannons, sat the expanse of Terra Nova's surface. A desert stretched all along the planet's equator while the colony itself resided on a continent of the northern hemisphere.

It was truly amazing what a dedicated people could accomplish in a short span of time. Johnson was reminded of the story of WWII back at the start of the 20th. A dedicated people declared total war, turning car factories, furniture factories, and toy factories among many others into war material factories. They churned out thousands of planes, tanks, trucks, and warships in the span of only a few years while at the same time drafting millions of soldiers.

The same exact concept had been writ large, with trillions of people to help the process. Were it not for this enormous pool of resources, the rebuilding and expanding of the Citadel militaries could not have occurred in the tiny amount of time it had.

Johnson was interrupted from his contemplation of the scale of the accomplishment he found himself a part of by his LADAR specialist and external sensors officer Ensign Ro, "Sir we have unidentified vessels approaching from out system."

"Can't you get a LADAR silhouette from them?" Johnson asked, suddenly nervous. "Unidentified" was an immediate red flag.

"Negative sir, they're too far out," Ro responded. Ensign Ro had been one of the few junior officers to carry over from a previous posting. She was experienced from her time aboard several of the Alliance's now defunct warships. Johnson knew that she understood her station better than anyone on the ship.

"Ensign Avalos, get me the Rainier," Johnson commanded. Unlike Ro, Avalos had been a thorn in Johnson's side from the moment he'd come on board. Headstrong, manipulative, and cowardly he'd attempted to skirt every duty he was assigned. Johnson had had a hell of a time making him fall in line and even that was tenuous at best.

"Yes, sir," came the slightly snide reply as Avalos tapped on his holographic interface. "Patched in."

"Rainier, this is Waterloo, we have unidentified vessels closing on our position from out-system," Johnson said. "Requesting instructions."

"We see 'em too Waterloo, standby for the Fleet Admiral," came the reply from the Rainier's communications officer.

"Captain Johnson, this is Fleet Admiral Farla," Farla said. "Move to engage. Confirm the identity of those ships immediately."

"Understood sir, moving to engage," Johnson replied. "Ensign Avalos, contact the Gettysburg, Honolulu, and San Francisco and tell them to have their contingents form up on us.

"Lieutenant Jacobs, get us within range of those ships," he continued to his helmsman. As their ship moved toward the unidentified vessels, the dreadnought contingent took position at the rear while the cruisers positioned themselves between the frigates at the front and the dreadnoughts.

The group of warships fanned out into a staggered delta formation with several kilometers between each vessel.

As they moved forward through the intervening space Johnson had Ensign Ro activate the long range cameras to try and get an image of the approaching ships. What they saw in the images the cameras provided immediately caused Johnson's nervousness to skyrocket straight into real fear.

The dozen or so ships approaching them from the blackness of space looked similar in shape and dimensions to Sovereign, the geth dreadnought that had plowed straight through several warships during Saren's attack four years ago as if they weren't even there.

It had been the pinnacle of geth engineering, a ship so advanced that it could do maneuvers in the gravity wells of planets that would destroy even the Citadel's new and improved warships despite being larger than any dreadnought that any of the council races had ever conceived of building.

And now it appeared as if there were more than a dozen of them advancing toward their skeleton crew of warships. Johnson immediately cried, "Ro, I want a LADAR silhouette profile on each of those vessels and I want it NOW!"

"Sir, LADAR confirms, the inbound vessels match that of Sovereign" came the declaration Johnson least wanted to hear.

"Avalos, contact the other ships; tell them to fall back!" Johnson commanded.

As Avalos half-heartedly conveyed the message to the other ships Johnson said, "Jacobs, get us the hell back to Terra Nova!"

"Aye, aye sir," Jacobs said, engaging the controls in front of him with the swift fingers of a well practiced helmsman.

As the group of ships turned tail to regroup with the rest of the unit, Johnson commanded, "Avalos, link me to the Rainier right now."

"Yes sir," Avalos said, again only half-heartedly punching in the commands. Johnson couldn't understand Avalos' resistance but at the moment he could do nothing about it. He spoke into the communications console, "This is Captain Johnson. We have confirmed the inbound vessels identity: They are nearly identical in both appearance and LADAR to Sovereign. Prepare for inbound hostiles."

"Say again Waterloo, did you say identical to Sovereign?" came the incredulous reply.

"Affirmative Rainier. Requesting instructions," Johnson said.

"Standby Waterloo," was the brief answer. It took a few moments before the communications officer on the Rainier came back on the line and said, "Continue your withdrawal. Regroup at these coordinates," the console in front of Jacobs flashed with the new set of coordinates and Jacobs immediately plotted a course for them.

Johnson took a moment to convey the instructions to his fellow ships before he walked over to Ro's console to stare at the advancing enemy. The entire development drive of the Citadel had been designed to combat the vessels that Shepard had used to abduct the council. It had been assumed that it would be prohibitively difficult to construct more warships like Sovereign yet there were what appeared to be over a dozen such ships advancing on their position.

As the Waterloo and her contingents of warships reached the rendezvous point, Johnson received further instructions, "Captain, direct your vessels to spread out in volley formation between the advancing ships and the colony."

Surprisingly it was the voice of Fleet Admiral Farla he heard over the radio. Johnson quickly did as he was told, positioning the dreadnoughts again at the rear in a staggered line. Each of the frigates and cruisers had been equipped with Thanix Cannons but the technology had yet to be tested on an enemy vessel of the size and power they were about to face.

Johnson could do nothing but wait as the enemy ships advanced, slowly for ships that size. It became a nerve wracking waiting game, watching the enemy slowly advance but knowing that attacking directly was foolish.

It was a full twenty minutes before the enemy got within range of the dreadnoughts but when they had, every dreadnought on the line opened fire on predetermined targets. The hundreds of heavy tungsten rounds appeared to do absolutely nothing to the advancing ships, their inexorable drift slowed not at all. Soon, they were in the range of the carriers' fighters and the frigates and by that time, the anti-hacking protocols were being heavily tested.

Every ship in the fleet was attacked through the wireless network they used to share battle information. Though the initial spike in activity nearly crashed the computers that housed the protocols, it was eventually rebuffed.

Unfortunately that was not the case with the fighters whose onboard computers couldn't handle the simultaneous attack and failed. That left hundreds of single man fighters drifting uselessly in the middle of the battlefield.

Though this forced the frigates to maneuver carefully to avoid killing any of the pilots it was a weakness that wasn't shared by the incoming enemy. They opened fire on the nearby frigates, destroying several before the helmsmen could adapt. The survivors immediately opened fire with their Thanix cannons, but to no avail. The enemy ships didn't even shiver from the collisions of over a fifteen simultaneous attacks per vessel.

It was in this instant that Ensign Avalos stood from his chair, pulling from his hip a pistol. As he moved to aim at Captain Johnson, who was looking over Jacob's shoulder, Ro looked up.

Instinctively, she jumped up from her chair behind Avalos and dove at him, tackling him to the ground. His pistol discharged harmlessly into the floor. Ro struggled to keep his pistol trained away from her Captain and the rest of the crew and then several others moved to help her, restraining Avalos and taking away his pistol.

It was a scene mirrored aboard dozens of the other ships in the unit and in some cases it resulted in the destruction of the vessel. Everything from eezo plants forced into meltdown, helmsmen driving their ships straight into enemy fire, and life support officers venting the ships of atmosphere ended the lives of hundreds of sailors and marines.

This gave the enemy ships the opportunity to send hundreds of troopships to the surface of Terra Nova and then turn and destroy several more warships.

The Alliance forces scrambled to send off their ground troops and reengage the enemy.


	8. Chapter 8

Johnny, go help Winston!" Staff Sergeant Torez yelled over the sound of gunfire. He watched as Private John Stanley sprinted from his cover beside Torez to Winston near the back of one of the new skycars in the middle of the street.

The battle had sprung up all across the colony as soldiers from the ships in orbit tried to halt the advance of the unknown enemy and protect the civilians they were so intent on killing.

The bodies of many littered the streets, casualties from before the marines had touched down.

Even with new weaponry and armor the Marines were only able to slow the enemy. The enemy's weapons tore through the new shields faster than seemed possible given the technological leap their armor had taken.

There had been no time to find a safe place to evacuate the civilians in the midst of heavy fighting and each platoon was isolated and uncoordinated. This had been the deaths of dozens of Marines, including half of staff sergeant Torez's platoon. Nearly all of the green officers had been killed and the rest had been wounded too badly to do their duties. This left him in charge of the remaining troops.

As Johnny settled into cover next to Corporal Winston he asked, "Hey, you think we'll have to fight any of those frakking zombies the geth make? I hate zombies."

"Hey, if you're scared I'll protect you," Winston said sarcastically. Inwardly he knew there was little to be done. The enemy's shields were vastly superior and it took nearly an entire thermal clip just to breach them. They were losing badly and the beginnings of despair were clutching at his stomach.

"Frak you man, it ain't like-" he was interrupted as Winston stood and shot back at the enemy.

"This used to be a nice neighborhood!" Winston shouted at the aliens who were exposed.

Johnny was new to the Alliance Marines and couldn't understand just how tenuous the situation was. Fresh from basic training he had no idea what kind of shit he'd dropped into.

All of the Alliance's ground forces were dirtside yet enemy reinforcements were still arriving. As Winston got back into cover, he saw out of the corner of his eye the shapes of more enemy troopships landing in the plaza down the street.

"Frak!" Winston exclaimed. "Sir, we got enemy reinforcements inbound from the plaza!" he said into his radio.

"I see 'em corporal," staff sergeant Torez responded. "Everybody fall back! Make for the residential district!"

Winston shoved Johnny into motion then ran as fast as he could under the weight of his equipment for the residential district two blocks away in the opposite direction from the plaza.

They were almost half way there before they heard the terrible howl of the enemy's troopships pass them on the right. As Winston watched, two of these ships moved into the street, preparing to disgorge troops.

Winston and the rest of the platoon stopped, completely exposed and unable to take cover in the empty roadway. As they tried to run for an alleyway, the troopship opened fire, killing several marines as they ran.

Winston was shot in the leg and fell to the pavement. As he tried to crawl forward, he knew it was hopeless. Private Stanley was too green to notice his absence and couldn't hear his cries for help.

He turned back to face what he knew would be his death, incapable of dying with his back turned. As a result, he was the only member of the platoon to see the two troopships explode and crash into the center of the street.

Debris from the explosion sailed over his head. He stared in amazement, thinking that somehow reinforcements had come. When he saw the unmistakable silhouettes of his rescuers he said to himself, "What the…"

/\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

"Engage stealth systems!" Johnson shouted from his place at the front of the ship. The wreckages of dozens of his fellow warships cluttered the battlefield. Though thousands of kilometers apart, it forced him to avoid obstacles in an effort to get within range of the enemy and get a firing solution.

Johnson and the rest of the unit couldn't afford to lose any of their shield strength by pushing aside debris because the enemy's weaponry was so powerful.

Standard tactics had been forsaken due to the sheer advantage that the enemy held. Dreadnoughts had been all but abandoned because the frigates and cruisers had to get in so close and react so quickly. Sustained long range fire was useless when everyone was in the same area.

And then there was the unit wide mutiny attempts, something Johnson couldn't wrap his head around. Avalos had been a pain in the ass but a traitor? Even then, entire ships had been lost to mutinies, both by enemy fire and to self destruction.

Johnson could grasp a lot of things but suicidal mutiny went way beyond his capability to rationalize.

The ships under his command were losing. Their numbers were too few to penetrate the enemy's shields and their own shields were too weak to protect them from the enemy's weapons.

One by one, Johnson's frigates and cruisers were destroyed. An initial force of over two hundred ships had been reduced to just under a hundred by the mutinies and combat. And when the Rainier had attempted to call for reinforcements from the nearby Local Cluster, which housed a huge fleet of thousands to protect Earth and Arcturus Station, they'd been told that Earth was under attack itself and reinforcements wouldn't be coming.

The battle, as much as he tried with all his heart to deny, would soon be lost.

"Sir, incoming vessels from the mass relay," Ensign Ro said from her console. She tapped furiously at her console.

"Reinforcements?" Johnson asked, barely willing himself to hope.

It took a moment before Ro responded. Her hands stopped their rapid movement across the console and slumped to her side as she said, "No sir. Geth."

This short declaration deflated the entire crew that was within earshot. Even Jacobs, who had been concentrating on maneuvering the ship during its pestering of the enemy warships, visibly slowed. The despair this one sentence brought was all consuming.

Johnson asked quietly, "How many ensign?"

"Sir, LADAR counts over four hundred," Ro answered in kind.

Johnson knew then that this would be his final assignment. He knew that his ship would be destroyed along with the rest of those under his command. He knew that there was no hope.

With that knowledge in mind he said to his new communications officer, "Get me an open channel."

It took only a moment for the ensign that had replaced Avalos to do as his CO commanded.

Johnson stood straighter, compelling himself to look confident for his crew, and said, "To all ships; this is Captain Johnson speaking. Inbound are hundreds of geth ships. They're here to wipe us out, to pound us into so much cosmic dust as we lay broken at the site of our defense.

"They think we're helpless. They think that they can pummel us with superior numbers like they did nearly a year ago," Johnson continued. "What they didn't count on was our ability to persevere. Even now our ships outgun and out fly every pathetic wasp-like ship they have."

"Humanity and the species of the galaxy spent the last year developing every countermeasure, every advancement, and every advantage they could think up. Our weaponry and men outclass their _synthetic _bound technology and personnel," Johnson took a breath, hoping that his diversion would work, "So I say we show them just what we can do. I say we prove to them and Shepard just how insignificant his robot army really is."

"To all ships: divert all efforts to drive the new fleet out of the system!" Johnson concluded. "Jacobs, take us in."

"Aye aye sir," Jacobs responded. With that the helmsman turned the ship away from the enemy dreadnoughts and accelerated toward the advancing geth.

As the remainder of Johnson's unit sped forward, the geth ships advanced quickly. Just as they came within striking distance of Johnson's frigate, they accelerated to FTL, speeding past the Alliance ships.

"Sir, they've gone right past us!" Ro said from her console. A moment later she stared at her console in disbelief then said, "And have _engaged _the enemy dreadnoughts!"

"What do you mean engaged Ensign?" Johnson said as he leaned against the G-forces that Jacobs' turn caused.

"I mean sir that they are firing on the dreadnoughts," Ro replied.

As Jacobs brought the ship into position to view what was going on, Johnson stared at the scene in disbelief. The geth warships were surrounding the enemy dreadnoughts, pestering them with mass accelerator fire and what looked like Thanix fire.

Every time one of the geth ships shot, it immediately engaged its FTL drive and did a very short range jump to another position where it fired again. Johnson had no idea how the ships were able to keep their shots on target because it would have taken their computers several seconds to compute a firing solution.

Johnson and his entire crew were baffled into inaction. The geth, their enemy since Shepard's attack on the Citadel, were _helping. _

But their attacks were doing as little good as the Alliance's. Just as Johnson was beginning to grasp the situation and recognize the futility of the geth's actions, he saw what looked like shuttles leaving several of the geth warships.

These shuttles moved quickly toward the dreadnoughts and just when Johnson thought they would be rebuffed by the dreadnought's shields, they weren't. Instead they passed right into the envelope and coupled with the dreadnought.

Johnson didn't know what was going on and he looked around to see looks of confusion on the faces of his shipmates. Finally he decided that he had to do something and said, "Jacobs, take us in closer. Ensign, tell the rest of the unit to standby for orders."

Two aye aye's rang out and then the ship began to move closer to the dreadnoughts and geth ships.

"Sir, the geth vessels are sending troopships to the planet's surface," Ro said.


	9. Chapter 9

Dima Petrova had lived with her husband and son on Terra Nova for over 14 years. They'd come shortly after the platinum ore had been found with both herself and her husband taking jobs in the mines.

Her husband, Dmitri, had died four years ago in a mining accident, leaving Dima alone to take care of their then five year old son Gregori. As a result, Dima was forced to take on two jobs which she'd held until the attack had begun. She hadn't mourned for her husband because of the demands of supporting a child on a mining colony. She hadn't complained when she'd been forced to find a second job at the platinum refinery. For her, supporting her only son was all that mattered.

She was preparing to leave for the refinery on the clear Sunday morning when she heard gunfire and screaming from the street outside her building.

When she looked outside, she saw grotesque aliens gunning down her neighbors. She immediately ran to Gregori's room to make sure he was alright. After seeing that that he was and was lying in his bed she marginally relaxed. Quickly she locked the door and moved to where her son was.

"Mama, what's happening?" Gregori asked from his bed, hearing the gunfire but not registering what it meant in his sleep-addled state.

"Hush, _miliy moy_, be quiet. Everything's alright," Dima lied. She knew not what the aliens were but suspected that they were slavers of some sort. Memory of the abductions of colonies in the terminus systems immediately sprang unbidden into the forefront of her mind. As such she knew in her heart that being found was the worst thing that could happen.

She sat with her son on his bed until the sounds of gunfire became distant and the screaming had died down. Then she got up, quietly unlocked the door, and walked slowly to the window.

When she looked out she saw the bodies of many of her neighbors, people she hadn't had the time to get to know, littering the street. She covered her mouth with her hand in horror. Despite not knowing them well, those people had taken care of Gregori while she was at work. Many had tried to comfort her when Dmitri had passed and she had ignored their kindness, instead trying to push through her situation on her own like her parents had taught her to.

She could recognize the forms of the Williams', Rosenthals, and Changs in the street. This sight created in her a fear like she'd never known.

Without truly thinking through her situation, Dima felt an overriding need to run. "Gregori, get your toy, we have to go _miliy moy,_" she said, a small measure of hysteria in her accented voice. Her and her husband both came from the Russian Federation, one of the few countries of earth to maintain its independence over the tumultuous years that followed first contact.

Gregori, who was crying because of his mother's fear, shuffled off to get his one and only toy, a stuffed tiger. It was modeled after a species of animal that no longer existed on Earth and had cost Dima half her combined monthly salary to buy shortly after the death of her husband. Though he was growing too old for it and it was falling apart, Dima knew that Gregori still loved the toy.

She grabbed several of her own most cherished possessions and stuffed them into a worn duffel bag along with some food and water. Among the possessions were a photograph of her husband and son near the mines where she worked with black rock smudges on her husband's face, her husband's remains in the form of a large clear diamond, a process that had cost her two months of her mining job's pay, and the family's one pistol. Too old to use the newer thermal clip technology, it was also mostly useless since her husband had died, falling quickly into disrepair due to the miniature element zero core at its heart.

Gregori came back through the small living room to Dima in the kitchen. Dima placed her arm around her son, slung her duffle bag across her back, and made her way through the kitchen to the back door.

With her heart beating in her throat, Dima ran from the back door of her building into the open area behind the nearby markets. She heard gunfire from behind her as she and Gregori ducked into an alley.

They made their way through the markets where food and supplies were on display in several of the buildings. Bodies littered the streets and Dima tried to shield her son from the sight of blood pooling under them.

Children lay under their parents in the desolate streets as if the parents had tried futilely to protect them from harm.

Dima hurried through the streets, horrified at the sight of her fellow colonists, until she and Gregori reached the school where Gregori went. She heard the gunfire grow louder behind her and instinctively she diverted toward the school.

When she opened the door she walked straight into the barrel of a shaking gun, held by a very frightened looking man. Behind him cowered a mother and two children, one boy and one girl.

"Please don't shoot me!" Dima said, holding Gregori closer and recoiling.

"Get out of here! This is our spot! You'll lead them right here!" the man said simultaneously. His finger twitched slightly on the trigger of his vintage assault rifle.

"Quiet, close the door!" the mother whispered in a near panic. This snapped the man out of his own aggression and he immediately closed the door, forgetting entirely about Dima and her son until after the door was sealed.

He stood there behind the closed door, rifle in his hands, and stared down at Dima as she cradled Gregori close. He looked at the woman, who Dima assumed was his wife, and then moved to join her.

He sat down next to her and let out a gruff sigh before he said, "I'm sorry. Things haven't been the best in the last few hours."

Dima was struck with the vast degree of understatement in his declaration. The sheer comical nature of his sentence forced her to laugh, a soft chuckle at first that slowly grew into hushed hysterical laughter.

This laughter slowly devolved into tears as Dima's pent up frustration about her situation before the attack, the death of her husband, and the sights of the dead in the streets of her home came out. In the presence of four total strangers she wept for her lost life.

The other woman saw her tears and, not knowing what they were for, moved away from her children to comfort Dima. The woman held Dima against her shoulder as she wept, rocking back and forth silently. They sat there, Dima holding Gregori in her arms and being rocked by the woman, for what seemed like hours to Dima.

Finally, her tears shed, she pulled away from the woman whose name she didn't even know. "Who are you?" she asked.

"My name's Caren," the woman replied before she continued, "my son's name is Billy and my daughter's name is Laura."

"I'm Rick," the man said, his rifle rested against the wall. He reached across the space between them and Dima took his hand and shook it firmly.

Only then did she look around. They all sat at the entrance to the school, at the start of a hallway that branched off into several classrooms and offices. It was an efficient design with little wasted space, an extremely important feature after the surge in population that had followed the platinum discovery had tasked the surrounding area for room.

The two groups sat with each other and tried to make idle conversation to distract themselves from what was going on. Soon they found that it was useless with the constant sounds of gunfire coming through the door.

Dima stood, restless with anxiety, to look around their small sanctuary with Gregori. Though in the back of her mind she knew that the school was no safer than her home had been, she was able to suppress such thoughts and marginally relax.

At least at the school she wouldn't be confronted with the images of her neighbors lying in the street every time she looked out a window. As selfish as it may have been, it was easier to look at the bodies of people she didn't know.

As she and her son walked down the hallway that he knew so well he pulled her by the hand to his classroom. She hadn't had the opportunity to see his classroom or meet his teacher in over four years.

"Come on mama, come look at this!" Gregori said from one of the desks. He activated the automated cover and the top of the desk pivoted back revealing writing styli and a data pad. He activated the data pad and showed her an image that he'd apparently drawn.

Dima rarely saw much of her son's assignments due to her long hours. The image on the datapad was of their last trip to the countryside with bright green hills and a sky of a more striking blue than she ever remembered seeing back on Earth. It had been over two years since that vacation but her son had drawn it so accurately that Dima knew he must remember it like it were yesterday. _He always was a good artist, _she recalled.

Again she was struck with the missed opportunities. While working she had only concentrated on getting by. Getting to work and paying the bills on time had been her whole focus ever since her husband had passed.

Her sad musings were interrupted by the crackle of a radio. At first she was startled at the sudden noise but then she grew apprehensive. The sound wasn't coming from outside of the building but rather from one of the rooms.

She pulled Gregori away from his desk and walked toward the door where she saw Rick with his assault rifle up. They looked at each other then Rick resumed his search for the sound. Dima decided to follow him out of curiosity, not really recognizing that she should be afraid.

Then the crackle turned into unintelligible words. Dima and Rick stopped and took a moment to listen. They soon decided that the voice sounded human and they continued slowly down the hallway.

As they approached the last few doors the sounds of the radio grew loudest. Finally they determined that the sounds were coming from the last door on the left at the very back of the school.

Rick slowly pressed the holographic button to open the door. With his rifle up he scanned the room behind it and, finding no enemies, he relaxed.

The sounds were coming from a radio on what had to be the teacher's desk. "I say again, this is Alliance HQ. To all civilians in northeastern Scott: your evacuation point is the Scott City Council Building. We cannot come to you, you must come to us," it said.

Rick looked back at Dima and they shared a look of hope. The Scott City Council building was only a few blocks from the school they were in. They quickly headed back to where Caren and her children were. With them they brought the radio.

When they had finished listening to the message and it had begun to repeat Caren said, "I don't think we should go."

"Caren, it's our best shot. If we stay here the aliens might find us," Rick said.

"We might not even make it!" Dima interjected. "We only have one rifle and we're just colonists!"

"I served four years in the Alliance Marines, I can protect us," Rick replied with more confidence than he felt. Internally he was terrified but the sounds of fellow alliance marines had rekindled a spark of courage in him.

"What about your wife and kids Rick? What happens if they don't make it?" Dima asked. She thought of her own son and placing his life in the hands of a man she had only just met.

Rick was momentarily taken aback by this question. "She's not my wife; she's my sister," he replied dumbly. When he had grasped the meaning of her question he continued, "And like I said, I can protect us."

They continued to argue the value of staying or going for several more minutes before Rick said, "Look, the Alliance is here just a few blocks away. If we stick to the areas behind buildings we'll make it.

"I wouldn't be able to protect us if we were found with this one rifle," he continued. "Our best chance is to get to the evacuation point."

The two women looked at each other. Dima had already known that their safety in the school was artificial. Even with Rick's rifle she knew they'd never survive if the aliens found them. Better to risk traveling in the open than to wait in a building with no secondary exit.

As much as she feared traveling to the city council building she knew that it would be safer there with the Alliance protecting them than it was sitting in the school.

She decided that it was a risk they had to take. "Alright Rick, I agree," she said.

"Really?" he asked before he corrected himself and said, "I mean, ok then. Caren?"

"I really don't like this idea. What about my kids Rick?" she replied, a look of fear on her face.

"Caren, they're not safe here," Dima said as she held her son. "This building isn't safe from the aliens, they can still reach us here and your brother can't protect us all by himself."

"Why is this necessary?" Caren persisted. "Why can't we stay here?"

"Caren this building is not defensible," her brother responded. "At best I can bottleneck them when they come in but we have no exits. Staying here would kill us all if the bad guys found us."

"Would you rather your children be killed because you were too afraid to act Caren?" Dima asked, voicing her own motivations for putting her only son's life in danger.

"I..." Caren said before she stopped and thought about the question. Her whole purpose for being on Terra Nova was centered around the desire to give her children a better life. She risked their happiness and their lives when she'd brought them to the colony. As such, Dima's question struck her through the fear. "No, I wouldn't."

Sensing that his sister had finally agreed Rick said, "Alright then. I say we go at dusk which is in," he raised his wrist to look at the clock on his wristband, "Two hours. That way it will be dark enough to go unnoticed and light enough to see clearly."

"I agree," Dima said. Though she struggled with second thoughts that any sane mother would feel she knew that it was their best hope.

The six survivors huddled quietly in the hall listening to the radio transmission repeat itself. Slowly but surely the sun sank in the sky and the atmosphere of tension caused a near total silence. The children fed off their parents emotions, old enough to heed the unspoken agreement for silence.

Finally, when Dima thought that she might change her mind and choose to stay Rick stood and said, "I think we'd better go now."

She took a deep breath to quell her nerves and stroked her son's head absentmindedly. Then she picked herself up and walked over to the door. Her son got up and followed her and the two of them stood next to Rick as he readied his weapon.

Behind them Caren and her two children, who remained abnormally quiet, got up to follow.

Rick motioned for the others to take a step back into the shadows of the hallway then he opened the door. He flinched slightly at the speed of it and the soft swish as the door slid into its casing.

Immediately he crouched and scanned the area with his rifle. An old Avenger, he'd had it since he left the Alliance military as a precaution against pirates and slavers. He'd never really imagined using it for such a purpose, the horrors of war had banished such daydreaming long before his discharge, but now he was doing just that.

After finding no hostiles, he motioned with his hand for the rest of the survivors to follow and then he stepped out of the doorway.

Quickly he led them out of the schoolyard and into the street. He knew that the streets were the most dangerous place they could be so immediately he diverted into the alleys behind the buildings that lined the roadway.

The alleys they entered stank with the refuse of the various stores. Trash compactors whirred as their automated systems crushed food, plastics, and metals into small cubes. Large piles of these cubes lay stacked next to the compactors waiting to be collected by the garbage disposal crews.

Initially the children shrank from the smell, complaining quietly until Caren and Dima silenced them.

The small group slunk through the alleys with Rick doing his best to keep the rest quiet while scanning each corner for threats.

They quickly burned through the first half of their journey, leaving the markets for the flashier government district. Buildings that had been simple prefabs had been modified beyond recognition here with the money made from the platinum mines.

Some of the buildings had been designed with underground extensions in order to protect against a raider assault and to serve as shelters for survivors.

Rick and the other two adults knew that as the colony's population had exploded these shelters had been built deeper and deeper into the ground. _The perfect place to find shelter, _Rick thought as he looked for a safe way to enter the area.

The layout of the buildings didn't allow for alleyways and Rick was having a hard time finding a good route. He held up his hand to signal for the others to stop then motioned for them to take cover behind the nearest building.

As Rick stood there with his head poking out from behind the wall, he was startled by the sound of nearby gunfire. He listened briefly and as the sounds grew louder and nearer, he made a decision.

He motioned quickly for the others to follow him then he struck out into the street that ran the length of the district.

Sticking tightly to the walls and the small amount of shadows that they afforded he lead the group at a jog to the city council building at the center of the district. He scanned constantly with his rifle, searching for any sign of the enemy.

But despite the sound of nearby gunfire, he saw no one and nothing. As the city council building came into sight Rick slowed his pace and began paying closer attention to his surroundings. He had seen good men and women fall into the trap of relaxing when the mission was almost over. Such behavior nearly always resulted in tragedy.

In little more than a fast walk Rick scanned the area. He checked behind every building they passed for any sign of a threat. He swept his rifle back and forth, searching for any sign of hostiles.

But he found none. The city council building was within sight but still a few hundred meters away. Rick's eyes periodically stopped on the building just to make sure it was still there. He could see flashes from the clearing around it and began to worry about how safe the building would be when they finally got there. He was just about to check the gap between two of the buildings when he was knocked forcibly to the ground.

His head hit the concrete hard and lights danced in front of his eyes. Distantly he could hear his sister's and her children's screams and he struggled to get up through the haze.

Then something came down heavily on his chest and pinned him against the concrete. He looked down at it and saw what looked like an insect leg embedded with circuitry.

As his head cleared enough to see properly, he looked from the leg to its source. What he saw horrified him.

What looked like a giant insect was perched on top of him, a long, sharp tentacle raised above what he assumed was its head. Everywhere on its body was the glow of blue circuitry and growths of some grotesque sort.

The insect thing ducked its head down and hissed in a breathy, synthetic tone right into Rick's face.

He tried to move the insect's leg but no matter how hard he pulled it would not budge. He then tried to find his rifle, but quickly he saw that it had fallen out of his hands and across the street.

When he looked back up at the insect, he saw its raised tentacle draw further back and he knew it was about to strike. Pinned and immobilized, Rick could do almost nothing to avoid the attack. His last thought was that he would never see his niece and nephew grow up.

But just as the insect's tentacle was coming swiftly down a series of shots rang out in a strange rhythm and destroyed what had been the insect's head. The body crumpled on top of Rick. He pushed it off just as it began to dissolve. Furiously he brushed off the ashes, afraid that they might be toxic in some way. He looked around and saw Dima holding his rifle with confused look on her face.

"Thanks," Rick said.

"I didn't shoot it. I only just picked it up," Dima replied.

"Hey folks, thank god you're all right," said a soldier as he ran toward them from the doorway of a nearby building. Dressed in full combat armor with the designation A5 on his chest and a rifle in his hands, the man looked human. He was wearing what looked vaguely like the antique night vision goggles from the 20th century that Rick had seen in a museum on Earth.

His armor and weapons looked like Alliance issue but Rick wasn't in the habit of making assumptions when lives were on the line. "Who are you?" he asked with his rifle halfway up.

"Sergeant Torez of the 114 Alliance infantry," Torez replied. Then to the air next to him he said, "Blinkie, send word ahead that we've got survivors inbound."

Before Rick could ask who the hell Torez was talking to a response came in a synthetic voice, "Understood Torez-Sergeant. Message relayed."

Then the air next to Torez was suddenly occupied with a geth form. Rick instinctively raised his weapon to fire but Torez stepped in the way.

"Now you listen up," Torez said with his best impersonation of his drill instructor back in basic. "A shit-ton has happened that you don't know about, one of which is the geth saving our asses and yours. You are going to put down your weapon _right now_ because my friend Blinkie here just saved your life."

Rick weighed his options. He had never actually fought the geth, he'd only heard stories about their atrocities on Eden Prime and the Citadel. He knew that they hated organics and that they were willing to kill them for no reason.

But he also knew that just now he'd heard geth rifle fire when that insect was about to kill him. And he knew that he had no options. He lowered his weapon.

"Good. Now lets get you folks to the bunker," Torez said in a softer voice as he motioned for the geth he called Blinkie to take point.


	10. Chapter 10

"I know Earth is under attack but we cannot come to your aid Admiral," Fleet Admiral Farla said again over his comm link to Arcturus. If he had simply been a member of the Alliance navy he would gladly take his fleet to protect Earth. Even with the geth, defending Terra Nova was proving a fruitless engagement, at least in space. He had reports that his and the geth's ground forces were now pushing back the invaders and that civilians were being secured in bunkers so that at least gave him hope but without a fleet to support them or evacuate them they were as good as dead. He couldn't land ships to evacuate while those dreadnaughts controlled the airspace. He had had to lose several carriers before he had admitted this fact.

He was torn between his duty to the colony of Terra Nova and his duty to the cradle of humanity. As a human his first instinct was to protect Earth, to give it priority over a colony. But as the leader of the Citadel's peacekeeping forces he knew that taking the flagship of the Citadel fleet from an engagement he was already in to protect the home of the galaxy's newest scapegoat could prove disastrous. He had to believe in the Alliance's ability to defend the Earth on its own.

He accepted that he couldn't leave and give the council the excuse they were looking for to replace him with a turian or asari officer, not after all he and the rest of humanity had accomplished. His position as Fleet Admiral was the only meaningful position held by a human, everyone else who was in a position of power had either been removed or replaced by a doormat.

"Ensign Hassan, get me Admiral Di'ala of the Destiny Ascension," Farla said to his communications officer. Though the enemy vessels had already destroyed the system's comm. buoy almost immediately he was somehow still able to communicate with the rest of the galaxy. Farla had come to the conclusion that the geth had already been in the system prior to the attack and had set up an alternate comm. buoy. It bothered him to think that the geth could be so far into Alliance territory without anyone realizing it but he decided to ignore his discomfort about it due to the geth's amity.

"Admiral Farla, where are you?" Di'ala said immediately after the connection was established. "The Citadel is under attack and we need your vessel here now to coordinate. Unknown enemy warships have attacked the Citadel. We've sealed the arms but have taken heavy casualties. To make matters more complicated, the geth jumped into the Citadel's orbit and attacked the invaders. I repeat, the geth attacked the invaders."

"What's the situation Admiral?" Farla asked.

"Unknown enemy warships have attacked the Citadel," Di'ala replied hurriedly. "We've sealed the arms but have taken heavy casualties. To make matters more complicated, the geth jumped into the Citadel's orbit and attacked the invaders. I repeat the geth attacked the invaders."

"The Citadel is under attack?" Farla replied dubiously. Quickly he thought about his duty as fleet admiral. If the Citadel was under attack then that was where he needed to be because he was fleet admiral and because of what he represented. He knew that his duty was to the Citadel races as a whole, not just humanity.

He tried hard not to think about how it would look to the people on Earth. He tried hard not to hear the cries of betrayal in his mind's ears. He tried desperately to convince himself that he was abandoning Earth to her fate in order to ensure that diplomatic relations could continue and maybe, just maybe, be able to save her. But inwardly he hated himself for making the choice he knew was right.

With a very heavy conscience he said, "Understood Admiral. I know about the geth, they are currently defending Terra Nova. Do not fire on them unless they fire on you. The situation seems to be more complex than we'd thought. I will be there shortly."

He was distracted from his conversation by a bright light coming from outside the portside window.

"Did you see that sir? One of the dreadnoughts just exploded!" Hassan said. Farla moved closer to the window and saw the shape of a geth dropship flying through space to a nearby friendly warship.

"Fleet Admiral, are you there?" Farla heard from his console by the galaxy map.

"Yeah Di'ala, I am," Farla replied as he returned to his position at the console. "The geth are not the enemy."

/\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

"No!" Risha shouted, jolting up in her bed. She breathed heavily and it took a few seconds for her to shake the memories loose and recognize her surroundings.

She saw the same four walls, weight set, and desk she'd looked at for months, but the sights and sounds of Neidus and the friends she'd lost there were still vividly present in her minds eye.

She shook her head and rubbed the soft spot on the back of her head where her fringes stopped and were replaced with skin. Then she swung her bare leg off the bed and deftly shoved herself into a standing position.

It had taken weeks of practice to master that one simple movement. Having only one functioning leg had changed everything for her and she realized just how much she had taken having two legs for granted.

She hopped her way into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Dressed only in the undergarb she'd worn underneath her armor, she could easily see the increased muscle tone of her arms and chest. She was stronger than she ever had been because of how much free time she had. Her abdominal muscles had grown immensely due to her need for better balance.

But it was her remaining leg that had grown the most. With its increased responsibility she had had to develop it more than any other muscle group. It had also taken a week to be able to move around the entire day unsupported with only one leg.

Risha turned on the tap and splashed water into her face. Initially she had been worried that the water might contain organic material that would be toxic to her, she was being held captive by a human after all, but it seemed to her like Shepard had done his homework. Or at least he had filtered it well enough.

She was staring at her facial features and the new scars she'd received when she heard the soft buzz of a viewscreen coming from outside the bathroom.

Immediately on guard as she hadn't heard the distinctive sound of a viewscreen since her last shore leave, she crouched, all her weight on one leg, and poked her head out the bathroom. The area beyond the bars was deserted like always but there was light dancing across the furniture.

She stood and hopped out. The light was coming from the broken screen on her wall. Or at least the screen she had always assumed was broken. She stared at the images flashing across the screen while she tried to comprehend what she was seeing.

The screen displayed the sight of the Citadel under siege, huge warships being peppered with fire from the citadel fleet. The video was shot from the perspective of what had to be the gun camera of one of the citadel ships. She didn't need to be there to know that the mass accelerator shots weren't doing anything to the enemy warships.

The warships looked like the geth vessel that Saren had used years ago. But there was more than one; there were dozens and they were destroying the citadel fleet as Risha watched. The citadel arms were sealed completely.

In the back of her mind she knew that whatever she was watching had already happened due to the time delay of transmitting video across the galaxy but that only served to add to the suspense.

As she watched through the shifting image from the gun camera as the ship it was mounted on turned toward the relay she saw the unmistakable shapes of geth warships.

Instantly her blood boiled as she understood what Shepard was doing. _That spirits damned bastard's gloating_, she thought to herself. Her hands balled into fists and her entire body tensed as she watched in fury as the geth warships advanced on the Citadel fleet and opened fire.

As the frenzied maneuvering of the ship with the gun camera cut off Risha's sightline of the geth ships she wondered darkly to herself, _how many this time?_

Then the camera stabilized and Risha was able to get a look at the battlefield. She tried frantically to find a damaged or destroyed Citadel ship but could only see the hulls of those destroyed by the geth dreadnaughts.

She watched quietly, balancing on her one leg, and waited for the other shoe to drop. The gun camera panned and lined up with one of the geth ships and the bright blue light as the mass accelerator fired blinded Risha briefly. When her eyes had readjusted she saw that the ship had scored a direct hit and taken out one of the geth vessel's engines.

Risha relaxed marginally, pleased that the geth ship was incapacitated and waited for the Citadel warship to finish it off.

But it didn't. Sure that at any moment it would open fire and destroy the geth ship Risha leaned forward, resting one hand against the wall that the screen was mounted on. She wanted to see that ship destroyed, wanted to revel in the sight of the death of the enemy that had killed her whole team, her friends.

But it still didn't. Instead it just drifted there, as if the captain was having a change of heart, as if you could actually care about those synthetic bastards.

"Come on!" Risha shouted at the screen, willing the captain of the ship to make the final blow, to destroy the helpless ship in front of him.

But instead the Citadel ship turned away. It took a few moments for Risha to get past her immense disgust and see what was happening in front of her. When she finally did, her anger again was replaced by confusion.

"What the-"

/\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

"Admiral, I'm here," Farla reported over the encrypted channel as his ship drifted into the widow nebula.

"Finally!" Admiral Di'ala replied angrily. "What took you so long?"

Fleet Admiral Farla tried to ignore the blatant insubordination. As much as his station meant he was still human and his position as fleet admiral was on a knife edge. This led his "subordinates" to take a few liberties.

"I'm sorry _Admiral_, I came as quickly as I could. What's the situation?" Farla just couldn't let that one slide.

"The geth are conducting distraction maneuvers and I think I saw a few drop ships attempt to board the enemy dreadnaughts but they were blown away." Di'ala responded with at least some level of civility. "The Citadel arms are sealed with the council inside, we just had no time."

"Wait, so you're telling me that the council and all those civilians are sealed inside the station?" Farla asked, thinking quickly. The dreadnaughts were too powerful and the only things he'd seen to be effective against him were the geth yet it sounded like they'd failed.

"Affirmative sir, that's the situation," Di'ala responded over the radio.

"Alright admiral, we need to get the council and as many civilians as we can off that station. We need to keep those monsters out of the arms at all co-"

"We may be able to assist," interrupted a synthesized voice.

Farla looked up from his galaxy map, which was displaying the battlefield holographically, and said, "what the hell? Hassan, what are playing at?" After a quick excuse from his new communications officer did nothing to dispel his unease, Farla turned his attention to the voice and said, "Are you one of the geth?"

There was a brief pause before the geth responded, "Yes. We can distract the Old Machines while you evacuate key personnel. The station is lost Farla, Fleet Admiral."

"Old machines? What the hell are- nevermind. If you think you can distract them long enough for us to get the council out then do it," Farla replied.

"There is one more thing. We will need to send a group of mobile platforms to the Citadel tower," the geth said.

"Mobile plat- Why?" Farla immediately responded.

"There is something we need to do at the Citadel Master Control Unit," the geth responded cryptically.

"What do you need to do? What is this master control unit?" Farla responded.

"We cannot explain at the current time. We ask that you trust us," the geth replied.

"_Sir_, I don't think this is a good idea," Admiral Di'ala said. "What if they are just trying to trick us into letting them in so that they can kill the council?"

"The geth are also defending Terra Nova admiral and they've proven their benevolence. We are out of options, unless you can get your ships to maneuver like those geth over there and successfully distract these 'Old Machines' then we are going to have to let them do whatever it is they want to do," Farla replied. "Were they really just after the council then I doubt they would sacrifice the resources to defend Terra Nova.

"However, your boarding party will go in only after we get the council out. Understood geth?" Farla said.

"Understood Farla, Fleet Admiral," the geth responded. "We will comply."

"Good. Admiral, prepare your ships to evacuate the council and as many others as we can. Geth, step up your distraction efforts and try and keep those 'Old Machines' away from our ships," Farla ordered.

"Understood sir, Di'ala out," and with that the line went dead.

If Farla hadn't been distracted by the strangeness of speaking, and giving orders, to a geth he would have questioned how it had interrupted their conversation. As it was he had no idea how embedded the geth already were in the Citadel fleet.

Everything moved very quickly then. As Farla's remaining ships gathered near one of the seams on the far side of the Citadel, out of eyeshot of the enemy dreadnaughts, Farla could see on his holographic display the geth stepping up their assault. A few ships had already been shot down by the dreadnaughts' superior weaponry but Farla could see they were being less aggressive and evading more than they had been initially.

_Maybe their shields are finally being compromised, _Farla thought. To Ensign Hassan he said, "Open an encrypted line to the rest of the fleet."

"Aye, aye sir," Hassan said as he tapped at his console. A few moments later he said, "comm. link established."

"To all ships. Admiral Di'ala has told you our objective. We need to be fast in order to rescue the council, but there are millions of diplomats and civilians aboard that station. If anyone sees any opportunity to save some of them without risking the council or your ship you take it," Farla said from his position at his ship's galaxy map.

Inwardly, he knew the station was lost. He knew that they had no hope of rescuing everyone. So frustrated was he with his predicament that he hadn't recognized that he made no distinction between asari, turians, humans, and all the other species present on the Citadel. At that moment they were all just helpless targets to him, all just people.

"Admiral Di'ala, open the arms," Farla said.

"Yes sir," she responded. A few seconds passed before the arms of the Citadel began to part silently. A thin line of light appeared and then grew until it revealed the multicolored lights of the Wards.

As soon as it was wide enough the fleet's frigates charged forward to secure the area with their Thanix cannons. They took position closest to the arm that hid the shapes of the enemy dreadnaughts. Next were the cruisers followed finally by the carriers and the dreadnaughts.

Because of their size the Citadel dreadnaughts flew straight to the docking stations in a well coordinated maneuver born of countless hours of practice. After Saren's attack on the Citadel there had been a review of evacuation protocol and from it a new mandate for the vessels in the Citadel fleet to practice evacuating civilians.

Nearly six hundred ships occupied the inside of the Citadel arms before Farla gave the order to seal the arms again. He could just see the enemy dreadnaughts attempting to force their way through the rapidly closing arms. _It's a damn good thing those things are so much larger than our dreadnaughts, _he thought to himself.

Looking over his galaxy map, which at the moment displayed a 3D image of the battlefield, Farla saw a single geth frigate in position by the citadel tower. But true to their word they did not move in to dock.

_What the hell are their motivations, _Farla wondered. _Why would they attack the Citadel and abduct the council only to ride to the rescue less than a year later? Why kill all those people?_

Farla watched as his ship moved in to the citadel tower docking ring. The geth's forces that had arrived to support the colony of Terra Nova and the Citadel couldn't be anywhere near the size of the armada that had destroyed C-Sec and abducted the council.

Where was that armada now? Why wasn't it here defending them? Something about this situation just didn't add up.

Farla quickly ran through the series of events leading up to this moment in time. He started with Saren's attack on Eden Prime almost four years ago and went all the way up until this most recent attack on the Citadel.

He only partially paid attention as his ship docked, giving orders to his crew not to prioritize species and to organize the evacuation around their docking bays.

Each time he analyzed events he found more holes in the official story. Each time he looked at the people involved he saw more incongruity.

With his promotion Farla had been granted access to the recordings of Saren's attack on the Citadel. The fact that he committed suicide before firing a shot at Shepard and his team had always seemed odd to Farla; it wasn't something he could explain based on what he knew of the man. Saren had been a cold and ruthless individual, always willing to kill to further his objective. Saren had nearly achieved his objective of taking the Citadel for his own and all that stood in his way had been Shepard and his team.

The decision that Farla would expect of Saren would have been to attack Shepard yet the man hadn't fired a shot except at himself. It was possible that the cybernetic enhancements the geth had implanted him with had affected his mind but Farla didn't find that very likely.

In fact much of what happened in the First Geth War made no sense in the context of the official story. It wasn't just Saren's behavior but also the geth's. What could Saren possibly offer them to convince them to go to war for him? These almost religious isolationists can't have simply agreed to sacrifice themselves in a war based on one organic's charisma.

Their motivations were, for the most part, truly alien. But one motivation of theirs had been established beyond any doubt; the geth would fight to defend themselves and they would fight to survive. They had a drive for survival not unlike organics. This was proven during the war between the geth and the quarians.

So what could cause them to go to war of their own volition? Resources held no value to them to the best that anyone could tell. They had a whole sector of space all to themselves in which they could mine whatever they needed. Money was meaningless to them as they were not a part of the galactic community and hadn't accepted its method of payment. Religion was also out of the question as the geth were AI and would find no appeal in the concept. Perhaps self-defense? Could they believe that the council was a threat to them?

As Farla took his position at the galaxy map again he felt as if the answer was right there, just out of his grasp. Self-defense made some sense as the council did send probes and occasionally manned patrols. But to go to war over some probes and patrols? It just seemed too illogical for a race of AI.

And how did Shepard fit in? He fought them and won in the First Geth War. He lost a teammate to them and had watched civilians be killed by them. He had every reason to hate the geth but yet he was now their leader.

What could he possibly gain by attacking the council? He was a hero, the iconic embodiment of human perseverance and independence. He saved the council and there were even rumors that he had stopped the abductions in the Terminus.

As Farla watched the galaxy map's holographic display in this relative lull he saw that many of his dreadnaughts, carriers, and even frigates had already taken on evacuees from the citadel and moved to the edge of the ward furthest from the relay. He also saw several private vessels of various sizes leave the docking rigs. He briefly scanned their hulls for passengers and, upon finding that many were full of people, transmitting flight plans across the emergency channels so that their captains would know what to do.

The plan that he and his fellow captains had come up with was to leave through the back of the citadel and immediately disperse in order to have the best chance of survival against the enemy fleet. His subordinates knew to keep a minimum distance between each other and to take extensive evasive maneuvers once clear of the Citadel.

The council had already been evacuated to Admiral Di'ala's carrier. This was a diplomatic maneuver of Farla's that ensured that if the council's ship was destroyed and the council killed, it wouldn't be completely blamed on humanity. It also happened to please Di'ala and the other nonhumans of the fleet, though they didn't necessarily _know_ why Farla made the decision.

But Farla continued to have a hard time concentrating on the immediate situation because he still didn't understand what drove Shepard to do the things he'd done. This whole mess was a result of Shepard's actions and Farla simply couldn't accept that he had to continue to operate without all of the information. He had risen in ranks far past the point that ignorance of the facts was acceptable.

Thinking about Shepard's attack, Farla was struck by the contradiction of all of Shepard's actions. The attack on the citadel was so brutal and the casualties so high that it seemed to oppose the image of benevolence that Shepard had had before it.

Shepard had been known to stop and help a beggar in need and he had often chosen to talk down honest aggressors instead of killing them. Shepard had been both an effective operator and a champion of the people before his attack on the Citadel. To even consider him committing such atrocities flew in the face of everything Farla knew about him.

Yet as the last of the ships disengaged from the many docking clamps scattered throughout the citadel he knew that it was a problem he would have to solve later. Farla had to concentrate on getting his fleet to the relay safely.

He barely noticed the geth vessels dock with the citadel tower. As he prepared his ship and fleet for the mad dash for the relay he could spare little attention for them. He had to wrestle his thoughts about Shepard into the back of his mind in order to focus on the very real threat of those dreadnaughts.

When the fleet's preparations were complete Farla ordered his communications officer to open a comm. link with the rest of the ships and said, "To all ships; you all understand the gravity of our mission. We few have the survivors of the citadel aboard our vessels. These people trust us with their lives. We must ensure that they leave this nebula safely.

"The entire citadel government and her people are, and always have been, ours to protect. Right now it's just a little more literal. Fly hard and stay safe people. Good luck," Farla paused briefly and then continued, "Admiral Di'ala, open the arms."

Farla watched through the bridge windows as the vast metallic arms of the Citadel slowly and silently opened. A thin seam of purple light seeped through the crack that appeared between the wards, slowly opening to reveal the remains of several geth warships and a continuing battle.

As soon as the arms had opened enough Farla's compliment of frigates along with many of the private ships rushed through and scattered. Farla saw several peel up and out of sight, traversing the shorter distance over the top of the Citadel while others traveled to either end of it.

Soon the arms had opened enough to permit the cruisers and they too left. Farla diligently watched the sensors as ship after ship managed to escape through the relay.

The enemy dreadnaughts didn't seem to pay any attention to them as they left, opting to continue to engage the harassing geth ships. Farla thanked whatever powers there were in the universe for the presence of the geth. They'd proven themselves at Terra Nova by helping his men on the ground and even taking out one of those massive dreadnaughts.

They continued to prove themselves in the defense of the Citadel. Shepard was playing a dangerous game, but he _had_ spared a significant amount of the Citadel fleet when he could have completely destroyed it.

That was the shred of fact that continued to bother Farla, but as the Citadel arms opened wide enough to admit the carriers and dreadnaughts he again forced thoughts of Shepard out of his mind.

"Lieutenant Mashona, get us out of here," Farla said to his helmsman. The lieutenant deftly maneuvered their ship through the widening gap in the arms of the Citadel, squeaking their large hull through the gap just as it grew wide enough to permit them.

As soon as their ship was through the gap, Lieutenant Mashona dove down the bottom of the Citadel, quickly orienting the ship so that the Citadel was above them. Though the size of their dreadnaught created substantial inertia, the new type of drive core allowed Mashona to accelerate rapidly and maneuver more quickly.

This fact proved its value as the Rainier crested the side of the Citadel to the site of a heated battle. Farla could see through his sensors that the "Old Ones" were pushing toward the Citadel, continuing to ignore the escaping ships. The geth ships did everything they could to slow the "Old Ones" but with very little success.

Farla watched through the Galaxy map as Mashona dodged ruined hulls and stray mass accelerator fire. He could see that many of the larger vessels that had left the Citadel were almost to the relay.

As their ship quickly gained speed and headed for the relay Farla looked out at the debris-strewn battlefield. Trying to understand the motivations of his enemy, Farla ran through all manner of political, economic, and religious motivations that his species had had for war in the past. He tried to find some sort of reason for the attack; some sort of justification for the enemy's behavior. From border wars between the ancient Sumerians, religious conflicts between the Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and even the Greco-Persian wars. This train of thought stopped cold in the waters of the Aegean Sea of Earth, ignoring the thousands of years of warfare that followed this conflict. A general's plan had decided the fate of Greece and a similarity of actions struck Farla immediately.

_I know why he did it,_ Farla thought to himself, gripping the railing of the Galaxy map tightly. He stood there, fitting the pieces together, threading a political needle through all the facts, suspicions, and rumors. He soon saw the connections; saw how Shepard's benevolence, distrust of the geth, and selfless actions during the First Geth War fit with his ruthless attack on the Citadel, his cooperation with the geth, and his current aid of Citadel forces.

Farla felt a small sense of satisfaction at the realization. Like Themistocles before him, Shepard had seen war coming and had prepared accordingly. Though Themistocles had used the threat of a rival city state to spur his people to prepare, Shepard had used himself as that incentive.

However, that still didn't explain why the geth were working with Shepard and who the current aggressors were. Something still bothered Farla at the back of his mind; a name he half remembered trying to resurface.

But it would have to wait, because the Rainier was just arriving at the relay. Farla quickly began organizing his crew, "Mashona, point us back toward the Citadel, I want eyes on the enemy while we escape. Lieutenant Briggs, I want our weapons primed to fire as soon as possible. Ensign Hassan, get me an encrypted channel to all ships waiting to pass through the relay."

A series of "aye, aye's" followed and then Farla began issuing orders to the ships under his command, instructing several to mirror the Rainier's defensive posture. From experience he knew that his ships could do very little if the enemy chose to attack. Thankfully, they still appeared to be ignoring the escaping fleet.

Farla wondered at that. The government of the Citadel races was able to simply fly past the enemy ships without any sort of threat. The enemy had already proven that the attacks of the geth vessels had no real effect on them yet they continued to ignore the retreating Citadel fleet.

What could they want within the Citadel that hadn't already left? What could they need within that structure that was worth allowing the leaders of the largest cross-species coalition to flee?

_Perhaps exactly what those geth went to deal with,_ Farla realized. The geth _had _asked to board the Citadel and they _did _seem to know more about their enemy than Farla. It wasn't that far of a stretch for Farla to believe that the geth were working to thwart the very same objective that had likely spared all the ships that were escaping.

Whatever the geth and their enemy were trying to gain from the Citadel, Farla could recognize just how far reaching Shepard's plan was. He knew that there were things he didn't know but should and he knew exactly where to look. Farla had heard that Shepard's official report on the First Geth War had been buried and he decided then that that was the best place to look for answers.

Behind the Rainier the space around the relay had emptied as ship after ship had escaped through it. Farla had given his subordinates orders to escape to the turian home world of Palaven as, of the council species, the turians planetary defense was the strongest.

In less than fifteen minutes the Rainier was the only ship left. Farla ordered his helmsman to make one last sweep for nearby survivors and, finding none, to make for the relay.

Behind them the enemy ships had almost entirely moved within the arms of the Citadel. Whether to escape from the few remaining geth ships or for some other purpose Farla didn't know. He hoped that whatever the geth were doing inside the Citadel they succeeded at it.

Just as the Rainier was approaching the relay for the jump out of the Widow Nebula, Farla noticed activity on the sensors from the Citadel. As he watched, the enemy ships began rapidly leaving the Citadel. At the same time, he noticed a massive energy spike emanating from within the arms of the Citadel; all the arms.

Before Farla could make sense of what was happening, the Rainier completed its approach on the relay and jumped out of the system.

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Thousands of light years away in a solitary cell, Risha watched in confused anticipation as the events around the Citadel unfolded. She watched the screen on her wall as ship after ship escaped. Occasionally, her view would change, as if the feed she was watching switched from one ship's gun camera to another's. Troubled by what that implied, Risha nevertheless felt pleased that her government and many of the people on the Citadel were escaping.

At the same time, she tried to decipher her captor's motivations. For her, the situation was a bit different than Farla's. Risha knew Shepard's story about the Reapers. In the Spectres his motivations were the stuff of condescending discussion. A certain level of resentment was felt by all Spectres about Shepard's political appointment and his rapid rise to power.

This feeling of resentment was compounded by the ridiculous beliefs of apocalyptic horror that Shepard operated on. The idea that any Spectre would subscribe to such a foolish philosophy and then _act _on that philosophy was insulting.

It was these feelings that Risha had to contend with as she made the only logical conclusion; Shepard was right, the Reapers were real. Risha had studied the images of Saren's attack on the Citadel extensively. She had seen Saren's flagship Sovereign from all angles. The vessels attacking the Citadel were of the same family, differing only in size and minor cosmetic shape. And because the geth were fighting against them, the possibility that they were geth creations was beyond remote.

She hated every bit of this realization; she despised it with every fiber of her being. The idiotic ramblings of a politically appointed human Spectre that undermined everything that her species had fought to protect was correct and her people were wrong. Her people, the turians, who had protected the galaxy from the Krogan, defended its people from every danger, and enforced the rule of law across dozens of systems were wrong about a galaxy-wide threat and a newcomer human had been right.

The man that was responsible for the deaths of thousands of C-Sec and Citadel military personnel, the man that had killed her entire team in ruthless, heartless attacks was _right_. The Reaper threat was real.

Risha paid little attention to the screen after that. To her it didn't matter if the rest of the fleet got out. She knew that she was still missing key information, namely what Shepard gained by killing so many people, but she also knew that if she was still alive, she would learn that in time.

Suddenly she heard the distinctive tapping of a pair of approaching geth. _Right on time, _she thought. She moved toward the wall and held her hands outspread to her side. As the geth pair moved into view on the other side of her bars, she tensed, wondering if they might just kill her.

She had long since accepted that Shepard was insane and months of fearing a sudden death at the hands of his geth for no apparent reason were hard to forget.

The geth stopped on either side of the door to her cell and waited. She didn't know for what until she heard the sound of boots, real boots, making their way to her cell. Preparing herself as best she could for whatever was about to happen, she waited.

The sound of boots slowly grew louder until Risha saw a flash of bright blue by where she knew the lock for her cell to be. That flash of color became a three-fingered hand before moving out of sight.

Right then Risha knew exactly who it was. Fury welled up inside her almost instantaneously. The same anger that had kept her up night after night, the anger that had filled her dreams with images of her comrades' deaths raged inside her. Every scale on her body itched and she felt compelled to move, to strike out at the man about to let her out of her cell.

Her cell door opened and the two geth walked in, their distinctive rifles raised and aimed at her head. Briefly she glanced down the barrels of their guns and at the bodies holding them, wondering if she could force her way past them. But she quickly realized that even if she could force her way past them, she would never succeed in killing the man in front of her.

He walked away from the lock and into the opening of her cell and simply looked at her. Intellectually she knew that she couldn't harm him. He had just as much experience as her and she knew that he would exploit her precarious balance and quickly subdue her. Intellectually she _knew _that there was nothing she could do, that months of training herself to be sure on her one foot had been utterly meaningless; just the wishful thinking of a woman in solitary confinement.

But instinctively she wanted to shove her way past the two geth and strangle Lieutenant Garrus Vakarian until he died. _Instinctively _she wanted to slaughter the man she saw as a traitor to _everything _that matter for her species. He had turned his back on the established authority, the same authority that he had served for almost twenty years, and chosen to murder hundreds in the name of a _human's _cause. He had killed her teammate for no reason. On that deserted volcanic planet _Lieutenant _Garrus Vakarian had shot Staff Sergeant Dalarian dead as escape was in sight only to let the team leave.

This man, this monster, had collaborated with a human to undermine the security of the Council government.

The one fact that stayed Risha's clenching hands, the one fact that prevented her from releasing months of anger and sorrow in a futile attempt at killing the man in front of her was the knowledge that Shepard, the insane yet charismatic human behind so many deaths, had been right and no one had listened. The Council, the Alliance, and every council species had written off his warnings as nothing more than the fantasies of a man out of his mind. But he was a Spectre, sworn to protect the Council government from all threats to its safety and Spectres, as she and her colleagues well knew, did whatever ittookto get the job done.

_Whatever it took, _Risha repeated to herself as the geth bound her arms and led her out of her cell. Risha tried to meet Garrus' eyes but he wouldn't allow it. His mandibles fluttered repeatedly, as if he was highly agitated. What she saw in his expression was guilt, not the arrogance of power or the haughtiness of pride. Garrus Vakarian, the man that could easily kill her where she stood and had proven he was willing to commit such an act, felt _guilty_.

"Whatever it took," Risha muttered quietly under her breath as the geth led her into the hall.

**Author Note:**

**Whew, that took way longer than I intended it to. Between cross country trips, rock climbing, blog writing (http:/ guardianangel42. wordpress. com/ or http:/ www. ign. com/blogs/guardianangel42), weddings, and college I've just been horribly distracted lately.**

**I apologize to all of you who have been waiting for the latest chapter and I'm hoping that I will be able to finish this story before ME3 comes out. **

**Thanks for waiting,**

**GA**


	11. Chapter 11

"What do you mean the Citadel's been destroyed?!" Farla demanded as the Rainier exited the mass relay into the turian homeworld's cluster. In the space around them Farla could see several fleeing warships enter FTL, presumably to get to Palaven in the nearby system.

"Sir, I was looking straight at the aft video feed as we entered the relay," Observations Officer Lieutenant O'Leary replied, "and I saw a very bright flash just as we passed through."

"How can you be certain the Citadel was destroyed? How do you know that it wasn't just a weapon discharge from one of those dreadnaughts?" Farla responded, incapable of grasping how the Council's great fortress, their relic from the Protheans, the center of all the relays could have been destroyed by the invaders.

"I took a second look at the footage in the archive and looked at it frame by frame," O'Leary answered. He brought up the video file on his terminal screen and beckoned for Farla to approach for a closer look.

At this point the entire bridge of the Rainier had one ear open for the conversation, many sneaking glances over between operations coordinating the approach to the rest of the fleet. As Farla left his place at the Galaxy map and took position behind O'Leary's chair, O'Leary played the footage.

As O'Leary had said there was a bright flash right as the Rainier finished its approach on the Relay. "Alright, so now we'll rewind and play it at one frame per second," O'Leary said. His hand reached out and twisted the holographic playback-speed dial until the video was playing at the desired speed. Farla watched the Relay slowly come into view on the right hand side of the screen. As it began to dominate the screen, he focused on the Citadel in the center.

He watched as the enemy ships seemed to retreat from the blue Wards and then, just as the light from the Relay began to wash out everything else, he saw it; a bright blue-white flash from within the Wards themselves that engulfed several of the enemy ships. O'Leary paused the video deftly on this image to give Farla the chance to see it clearly.

As much as Farla wanted to deny what he saw, their high resolution aft camera had captured the scene completely. With a heavy heart at the lives lost and not a small amount of dread in his stomach at the chaos this would cause, Farla said, "I concur with your assessment Lieutenant, good work. Forward this image to my console, I'll need to alert the Council."

Farla walked away as O'Leary's hands flew across his console. He approached his own console and quickly transferred the image to his omnitool to present it to the Council. They weren't going to like this, and he still didn't know how he was going to convince them that Shepard was an ally in this new war.

Especially now that he had destroyed the Citadel. Farla knew instinctively that he had done it, and he quickly deduced that it had been the geth Farla had allowed to board the Citadel that had initiated the explosion.

The small knot of dread in his stomach grew significantly at this realization. Knowing the Council Farla could expect severe sanctions against all of humanity precisely when they needed to work together to fight off this new threat. The Council had proven before to be too mired in its own self-interest to work toward the good of the galaxy. If not for Shepard's defiance of their self-defeating policies the Council would be dead and the Citadel already taken by Saren.

_I need to look at all of Shepard's reports, _Farla thought. "Hassan, get Captain Chang up and tell him he's in charge for the next few hours." Without waiting for a reply Farla retreated to his personal cabin to begin his search.

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Halfway across the galaxy, Risha was forced into an interrogation room. A metal table and a pair of metal chairs sat in the center of the brightly lit room. Embedded in one wall was a one-way mirror and surveillance cameras rested in all the top corners of the four-walled room. The geth led her into the room and forced her into one of the chairs. They quickly connected her shackles to the chair and the floor.

Though this provided her with a perfect opportunity to strike, she didn't bother. She knew that Lt. Vakarian could easily subdue her and even if she did manage to escape, she knew too little about the true situation to be of any use.

She needed to know what was going on, and she had a sneaking suspicion that Lt. Vakarian would happily oblige. So she sat still until the geth finished.

From the doorway Lt. Vakarian walked over to the other chair and sat down. To Risha's surprise, the two geth left the room, leaving her alone with her fellow turian. "You do realize I could escape from these shackles and kill you before your geth friends have a chance to stop me right?" Risha asked tauntingly, hoping to goad Lt. Vakarian into revealing the level of surveillance she was under and the level of reinforcement that the base had.

"I think you deserve the opportunity to try," Lt. Vakarian replied, never quite looking her in the face. His response utterly baffled her, as did his demeanor. She had been their captive successfully for months, no small feat considering she had escaped from every known containment system in the galaxy as part of her personal training, and yet her captor couldn't even look her in the eye.

They sat in silence for several minutes while Risha carefully studied the man opposite her. She couldn't help but glare at him aggressively despite her relative helplessness. This man had personally killed her teammate, had helped kill the rest of her team, and had collaborated with a _human_ to abduct the leaders of the civilized galaxy in an ultimately futile attempt to kill them. But she also knew that Shepard's geth had helped rescue the Council in the footage she just saw and she hadn't seen anything to indicate that it was falsified.

"Why, Lieutenant?" Risha finally said. He refused to respond, choosing instead to stare just over Risha's shoulder. She tried to force him to make eye contact but he evaded her gaze. "Tell me why you killed my team; tell me why you attacked the Citadel."

Lt. Vakarian looked down at the table and his mandibles flexed convulsively in frustration. Finally he said, "I know how you feel. About your team at least. When I was on Omega fighting the gangs there, one of my teammates betrayed us and as a result my entire team was killed." Lt. Vakarian paused, clearly remembering that team. Risha could easily see the agitation in his gaze as his eyes danced back and forth and his mandibles fluttered repeatedly. "I know what you think of me; that I'm a traitor to all turians for abducting the council and all the rest."

The clear sense of remorse in his voice briefly dispelled her anger. The fact that anyone involved in those atrocities could genuinely regret their actions was a new concept to Risha. Most of her targets over the years had been heartless killers, slavers, and warlords who felt no pangs of guilt for their actions.

"But I want you to know something." Lt. Vakarian continued. "You were supposed to die on Neidus, along with the rest of your team," He said. He paused while Risha tried to decide whether this was supposed to be a comfort or an insult.

"You dodged the fatal shot. Legion missed your head and hit your leg instead. But as soon as the airlock door of your ship closed Shepard decided there was no reason for you to die and he saved you," Lt. Vakarian looked nervously around the room before he said, "There was a plan Risha. We had a backup plan in case Shepard couldn't convince the Council to act. He saw how they acted with Saren, he knew what it might take. Shepard saved you because you being alive didn't affect the plan after that door closed."

Risha took a moment to absorb what he had said. She could see that a plan existed but she couldn't grasp what that plan might be. How could murdering her whole team along with thousands of servicemen and women coincide with sparing her life the moment the airlock door was shut? How could doing any of that be justified? Even for a Spectre, those were despicable actions.

"You still haven't told me why Lieutenant. Why did you kill all those people? How did that further your cause? What did you hope to gain? Why did you spare me?" Risha demanded. Her temper rising at the flood of memories rushing through her head, she tried to contain herself. She needed to hear the reasons; she needed to know whether her team's sacrifice was worthwhile or if it was simply the result of the actions of a self-righteous madman.

"We killed all those people because we needed to create an enemy the Council would recognize, one they would fear enough to prepare against," he responded, his voice gaining confidence as he spoke. "Every time we tried to convince them of the Reaper threat, they refused to take action. They dismissed Shepard's evidence as circumstantial or deluded.

"We had to show them a 'real' threat, one powerful enough to strike them in the place they felt safest. One that could cripple their fleets and defeat all their defenders," he continued, a hint of reproach in his voice at the memory. Still avoiding her gaze, Lt. Vakarian's fingers tapped restlessly on the surface of the table, beating out an uneven staccato on the steel.

"More than that we needed to show them that they, personally, were not safe. They were so stubborn and so closed-minded that we had to devise such drastic measures to convince them to do what we wanted," he pulled a datapad from his belt and laid it in front of Risha. On its screen was a news article. The headline read 'Council Commits to Total War to Combat Traitorous Hero'.

It was dated just a few weeks after her team had infiltrated Neidus. "Councilor Anderson was supposed to fly the ship out of the system having watched you and your team die. You couldn't be allowed to give a report on your mission." Vakarian said before she could react. "If you reported to the Council you would expose that things weren't as they seemed. Shepard didn't expect that you would turn to the Shadow Broker and that forced our time schedule up. We couldn't put all the pieces into place in time."

Risha's blood ran cold as he finished his sentence. _He couldn't know that_, she thought. _There's no way he could know that. _"Who said we went to the Shadow Broker?" she asked, trying her best not to betray the surprise she felt.

Though at this point there was no reason to hide that they had, the fact that he seemed to know that they had gone to the Shadow Broker for information was extremely unsettling.

Lt. Vakarian finally looked her in the eye. His mandibles stilled, his fingers stopped their tapping, and he simply stared at her. Finally he spoke, "The Shadow Broker is under Shepard's control. We knew the moment you received your information where you were going."

Risha couldn't believe it. She couldn't fathom how a human could possibly force the galaxy's oldest and most secretive information broker to submit to his will. She couldn't understand how anyone could not only discover the Shadow Broker's identity but convince him or her to do what they wanted.

"That's not possible," she finally said. "There is no way Shepard could force the Shadow Broker to do what he wanted. He doesn't have that much influence." The tone of doubt in her voice was evident even to herself. She didn't want to believe that Shepard had that much power. Despite the fact that he had successfully tricked the Council into committing to total war she simply didn't want to accept that Shepard could undermine the supposedly sacrosanct secrecy of the Shadow Broker.

Lt. Vakarian's barked laughter was his reply. He looked at Risha in the eyes again and said, "If there is one thing an intelligent person should never do it's underestimate Shepard. He has a knack for proving you wrong."

He then tapped a button on his omnitool. The door to the room slid open and two geth walked in, rifles held idle in their hands.

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Farla sat at his desk in his personal chambers and quickly collected all of Shepard's Spectre reports, transcripts of conversations with the Counci, both on and off the record, and mission logs.

He found piece after piece buried in classified files that helped to explain Shepard's motivations. The visions brought on by the Prothean Beacons and the subsequent deciphering of them by this "Liara T'Soni", his description of Indoctrination, which went a long way toward explaining those inexplicable mutinies, and his detailed accounts of conversations with Saren.

_If Shepard truly believed that the Reapers were coming and that their goal was to wipe out all life in the galaxy that would explain why he would take the actions he did, _Farla thought. _And it would be one hell of a coincidence if these new enemies _weren't _the Reapers he spoke of._

Finally, he found the piece of information he needed most in Shepard's account of his conversation with the Prothean VI on Ilos. _How the hell did this get buried? How could the Council not check to see if the Citadel was a Relay that could control all other relays? How could they willingly ignore this?_

Farla checked through all related documents and, not finding any reference to a Council investigation, branched out into the reports by the various Council species' investigative forces and the STG.

Despite the fact that the Rainier's mainframes contained every log from every organization that would have been involved in such an investigation, he found nothing in all the hours he searched. It baffled Farla that the Council would allow this critical information, information that could easily cost millions upon millions of lives, to go unverified.

_What sort of idiot would actively ignore this gaping security hole? _Farla wondered. He was still trying to find some sort of reason for this when his personal console beeped.

"Sir, we'll be entering Palaven's orbit in 10. You're needed on the bridge," Farla's XO said over the intercom.

"Alright, I'll be right there," Farla sighed in exasperation. He quickly transferred all the logs that contained the information he needed to his omnitool and then shut down his console and made his way out of his quarters. As he walked the busy halls of his ship, absentmindedly returning salute after salute, he tried to find a way to present these facts to his fellow military leaders and confront the council about them. Hundreds of thousands of humans had died on Terra Nova and Earth, people that might have lived had the Council properly prepared and simply _listened _to Shepard.

Farla activated the door to the bridge and walked into the room. As he passed his observations officer's terminal, O'Leary said, "Sir, I'm seeing a lot of anomalous resource usage here."

Before Farla could respond, his communications officer piped in from across the room, "Me too sir. It's nothing severe but it's almost like someone's downloading operation reports from every ship in the fleet. I'll try and nail down the cause."

"Is it possible those warships managed to get a virus into our systems?" Farla asked, growing concerned.

"Not likely sir, but I'll run it by the tech officer just in case," O'Leary said.

"Good. Keep me apprised gentlemen," Farla said as he walked toward his spot by the galaxy map. He stood and waited there, watching his crew work to bring the ship safely out of FTL in orbit around Palaven. Finally, the blue shifted light outside the port and starboard windows changed to the blackness of space dotted with stars.

"Receiving friend-or-foe challenge," Ensign Hassan said in surprise. "Sending response." A brief pause followed and then he said, "Response sent. They must be getting worried Captain."

"Agreed. Get me a connection with Admiral Di'ala," Farla replied. He waited as Hassan tapped at his console.

"Fleet Admiral, thank the goddess you made it," Admiral Di'ala said as soon as the connection was complete.

"Of course, why wouldn't I?" Farla asked. He had a feeling he knew what his subordinate would say next.

"Several ships have returned in pieces, showing signs of internal detonations. Others simply arrive full of corpses, as if life support had failed somehow," Di'ala responded, obviously concerned. "One of my crewmembers attempted to assassinate me while we were in FTL, and Admiral Antelius was strangled to death by his helmsman.

"What the hell is going on sir?" she demanded. Though Farla couldn't see her face, he could hear the edge of fear in her voice. He could understand it perfectly. Facing combat was something every serviceman was trained for but these betrayals and mutinies were something else entirely. You learn to trust every member of your crew with your life because their ability to do their jobs is what keeps you alive in combat. To be betrayed by those people so fatally was something officers simply weren't trained for.

"I think I know why these things are happening Admiral but I want to bring it up with the Council first," Farla replied. "Relay my request for an audience."

"Yes sir," Di'ala responded. As Di'ala severed their communications line, Farla noted the fact that she hadn't questioned his order. _She must be more disturbed by these events than she let on, _he thought to himself before he began sifting through the evidence on his omnitool.

In the appropriated Hierarchy Capitol building's small conference room, the Council sat at the head of the room's table, a table made of what Farla assumed was the turian analogue to wood, while Farla and Di'ala took position at the other end of the table. A small holographic communication station stood in the corner of the lavishly decorated room.

"Fleet Admiral, I sincerely hope you can explain yourself," Councilor Valern began. "Shepard's forces have captured the Citadel because of your incompetence."

"Shepard's forces?" Farla asked, bewildered. He immediately turned to his subordinate and asked, "How much have you told them?"

Di'ala leaned toward Farla and whispered, "Nothing. The situation has been too chaotic to give a debrief, and you would be the one to do so anyway."

"Admiral, we would like an explanation," the salarian councilor said, oblivious to Di'ala's comment. "Why were you unable to defend the Citadel?"

Farla quickly regained his composure and replied, "Sirs, ma'am, The Citadel, Terra Nova, and Earth were all attacked by an unknown enemy fleet. Despite our numerical superiority in all cases, the attacking fleet was able to essentially ignore our attacks…"

Farla then proceeded to describe the events on Terra Nova and his fleet's complete inability to damage the incoming vessels. He described the situation, including the rash of mutinies and betrayals, in detail. Di'ala stiffened upon hearing of the mutinies over Terra Nova and she glanced at Farla as he spoke.

"Councilors, we were losing ship after ship with no gain whatsoever. Just when I believed that Terra Nova was lost, the geth jumped into the system," Farla said. "Naturally we moved to engage the geth, but they jumped past us and began attacking the "Old Machines" as they later called them."

Farla paid careful attention to the Council's reaction to this. Eyes widened in surprise and the turian councilor's mandibles twitched before he said, "That's impossible. Why would Shepard attack his own ships?"

"It's true councilors, the geth arrived in the Widow Nebula as well and began attacking the enemy warships," Di'ala interjected. "In fact, it was their involvement that allowed us to evacuate you at all."

"Impossible! The geth were the ones that abducted us! Why would they protect the Citadel?" the councilor Valern insisted.

"I wondered that myself councilor when I first saw the geth ships destroy one of the enemy vessels," Farla said, taking his time to reveal everything he knew. He wanted to gauge their knowledge piece by piece before he asked his own questions.

"They destroyed one? But I thought you said your ships couldn't do any damage to them," councilor Tevos asked.

"That's correct councilor, we couldn't. But the geth didn't use conventional methods. In fact they didn't use methods organics could emulate at all," Farla said. Both the Council and Di'ala paid careful attention as he described how they geth had quickly avoided the enemy warships fire while attacking with pinpoint accuracy using short range FTL jumps. He described how they had used dropships to board the enemy vessels and eventually how whatever was on those ships had destroyed the enemy from the inside.

Then Di'ala described the situation around the Citadel before and after the geth arrived in the system. She detailed their involvement in distracting the enemy long enough to seal the Citadel arms and how they had attempted to duplicate their success in destroying the enemy.

"When I received Di'ala's request for my presence I immediately left Terra Nova for the Citadel," Farla said when Di'ala was finished.

Di'ala's support of Farla's claim that the geth were in fact on their side had temporarily placated the Council. Farla noted with disdain the human councilor's efforts to side perpetually with the rest of the Council in whatever position they took.

He hid his feelings and continued his debrief until he reached his deal with the geth. "You let geth board the Citadel?! What in the hell were you thinking Admiral?!" the turian councilor shouted.

"I was thinking about saving the lives of as many civilians as I could, you four included," he replied levelly, refusing to voice his angry indignation at the question. "I was out of options. Despite the geth's help we couldn't defeat the invaders. I had to evacuate as many people as I could, and to do that the enemy ships needed to be distracted. The geth were the only ones that could do that, and they had only one condition; that I allow a few of their dropships to board the Citadel _after _we had finished the evacuation."

"You let those geth onto the Citadel without knowing what they wanted?" Councilor Tevos asked.

"I know exactly what they wanted," Farla replied. "To destroy the Citadel."

"What?" the salarian councilor asked, eyes widening. For once the Councilor Valern sat speechless, mouth slightly open and eyes narrowing.

Before any of the other councilors could ask something else, Farla replied, "And they succeeded. Now why would Shepard want to destroy the Citadel when you four had already escaped? What could possibly be on that station that was a more valuable a target than you?

"I know for a fact that you know the answer to that question councilors," he continued, actively ignoring the human councilor and focusing entirely on the three aliens.

"It's irrelevant why he would want to destroy it! What matters is that you let him!" Councilor Valern finally said.

"Wrong councilor. You see, I did some digging," Farla responded coldly, finally letting an edge of anger into his voice. "I simply couldn't reconcile Shepard's past actions with his present ones. He was a hero and known for his kindness toward the helpless and yet he butchered thousands when he abducted you. Then, right when we are about to lose everything, his geth rode to the rescue.

"I simply couldn't see how those two facts could coincide," He continued, silencing the council with a stare. "Not until I remembered an ancient general from Earth and saw the similarities. Then I realized that he butchered all those people and abducted you to get you to prepare for the enemy ships we just faced. He did it to trick you into preparing for war."

The councilors sat rigid in their seats at this revelation. All sat quietly, with the human councilor glancing at his counterparts for direction.

"Now what could Shepard have possibly known about that would drive him to such drastic action? What could possibly motivate a galactic hero to make himself an enemy of the Council?" Farla asked.

"The Reapers are a myth," Councilor Valern stated flatly in reply. "There is simply no way that a race of sentient starships could escape notice for so long!" His fellow councilors seemed distinctly less convinced, with Councilor Tevos and her salarian counterpart sharing a worried glance.

"You were presented with verifiable evidence that you chose not to verify," Farla accused. "Shepard told you that the Citadel was a massive mass relay that could control all other relays in the network and you chose not to verify that claim.

"He told you about how Indoctrination was used to brainwash people to betray everything they stood for and you had the ability to verify that with the STG operatives he rescued on Virmire but _you chose not to_," he continued. "We have lost thousands of servicemen and women because of that Indoctrination!"

"You cannot honestly believe that any being could manipulate organic minds to act as they wish like Shepard claims," the salarian councilor said. "That ability is pure fantasy invented by the mind of a disturbed Spectre. I would much sooner believe that the poor training of your subordinates were the cause of those losses."

"I was nearly assassinated by my ship's mechanic and we have lost dozens of ships to mutinies and sabotage," Di'ala replied coldly as she glared at each of the councilors in turn. "I find the possibility of that capability explains a great deal. Like why hundreds of asari, turian, and salarian crew members would suddenly decide to murder their crewmates and captains."

"That has to be a coincidence," the asari councilor insisted. Farla could tell she was grasping at straws; that she simply didn't want to accept the possibility. He looked at all of the councilors and saw fear in all their faces. He saw how much they wanted to refuse to believe what he was saying.

He was focusing so much on their individual reactions that he didn't realize that the holographic communicator in the corner had begun to display Shepard in full body armor until Shepard spoke.

"Good evening Councilors, Admirals," Shepard said coolly. All of the people sitting at the table started in their seats and turned quickly to the source of the voice.


	12. Chapter 12

The two geth half-dragged Risha down a brightly lit corridor. Unlike the immaculate one she had been led through on her way to the interrogation room, this hall was clearly still under construction. Panels which looked to Risha like they had been made using a cross between geth and human design ethics stood leaning against the walls, leaving large amounts of cabling exposed.

Lt. Vakarian walked a few steps behind her and the geth as they wound their way through the compound's corridors.

Construction gave way to seamless architecture and then resurfaced throughout the course of their walk. Risha diligently kept track of every turn and hiding place. She noted the few times that she saw other geth enter or exit doorways as potential crux points in an escape.

In an effort to gain further information from her captor, Risha asked, "How did Shepard recruit the geth? What did he offer them?"

Lt. Vakarian simply laughed. His demeanor almost confident, as if he had vented his guilt and had begun to move on, he said, "Nothing. They came to him."

Shocked, Risha tried to turn around and face the other turian but the geth leading her wouldn't allow it. "What are you talking about?"

"Something I learned from Shepard a long time ago; if you prove you can get the job done, people flock from all over to help out," he replied cryptically. The group had entered what appeared to Risha to be a separate part of the facility as the corridor's ceilings had risen and the walls expanded outward.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Risha demanded angrily. "Is this about the Reapers? Did Shepard convince the geth that the Reapers existed?"

"No, he didn't need to," he replied. "The geth knew about them before Shepard did. Sovereign contacted the geth before it attacked Eden Prime. It was the one that convinced them to follow Saren."

Risha hung in silence, trying to find holes in what he had said. Shepard's belief in the Reapers was infamous and a topic of significant derision on the Citadel. Yet _someone _had attacked the Citadel and it hadn't been Shepard. That much was clear to her.

But was it truly possible? Could a race of sentient starships really exist? Could it really want to wipe out all life in the galaxy? Despite the video she had seen and the explanations Lt. Vakarian had given, Risha still wasn't sure. It was so outlandish, so inconceivable that she had an exceedingly hard time believing.

As they passed wall after wall in silence, Risha noticed the first sign she'd seen in the entire compound. On the wall, directing ahead of them was a holographic sign whose characters shifted to turian to display the word "Docks" as they approached.

_This is my chance, _she thought to herself. Building up her determination, she decided to try and distract her fellow turian. "Do you really believe Shepard about the Reapers or are you just following a charismatic face?" she asked snidely.

But Lt. Vakarian didn't rise to the bait. "I think you need to see something," he said. He quickly overtook Risha and her geth escorts and led the way _toward _the docks. Unsure whether to feel elated at her apparent good fortune or skeptical of the circumstances, Risha didn't struggle. They stopped in front of a polarized window and Lt. Vakarian used his omnitool to adjust its opacity.

The flood of light momentarily blinded Risha. When her eyes had adjusted, she stared out at a vast internal shipyard. The hulls of elegantly and uniquely designed warships filled her view in either direction. They slowly moved along the mammoth factory line as countless workers welded parts to every visible surface. Lights shone from every direction to illuminate the ships' metallic hulls.

In the gaps between ships Risha could see an atmosphere barrier protecting the workers from the vast blackness of space beyond. The scale of the production rivaled even the turians' largest shipyards.

It took a moment before Risha noticed the species of the workers. Among the expected geth worked hundreds of quarians in their distinctive environmental suits on sturdy scaffolds. That sight alone transfixed her for several minutes. Watching quarians actively cooperate with geth was surreal and she wouldn't believe it was possible if she didn't have the evidence in front of her eyes.

After managing to shift her eyes away from the sight of the two enemies working together she saw dozens of krogans operating machinery at the bottom of the bay. She watched as they lifted what looked to her like armor plating onto large, flat airborne conveyors. Each of the species worked independently but cooperatively, playing to their individual strengths.

The quarians managed the installation of technical systems like electronics and wiring while the geth provided efficient menial labor welding and affixing armor plating and support structure. The Krogans received and loaded every component using heavy lifting equipment.

It was an eye-opening spectacle of efficient industry. Risha was amazed by the sheer scale and audacity of the production.

Then she saw them. Tentacles flying across control panels with ease, directing airborne transporters to unfinished parts of warships, the rachni were the last thing she expected to see on the station.

"Rachni?" she whispered. "That's-"

"Impossible?" Vakarian replied. "This is why it's a mistake to underestimate Shepard. Entire species follow him because he's their only hope of defeating the Reapers; their only hope at survival."

"Why? Why do they believe Shepard about the Reapers?" Risha asked as she turned toward him.

"They've seen the proof," Vakarian replied. "The geth have spoken with a Reaper; consciousness to consciousness. And what one geth sees, they all see eventually. The quarians follow Tali'Zorah who was with us when we stopped Sovereign. The krogan follow their leader, Urdnot Wrex, who was also with us when we took down Sovereign. And the rachni owe Shepard their very existence, and through some sort of genetic memory they remember the Reapers.

"None of our accounts are worth anything to the Council though," he continued. "They dismiss Shepard's entire team's testimony as circumstantial. They would never believe a geth, or a quarian, or a krogan, and especially not a rachni."

Despite how badly she wanted to ignore what he was saying, in spite of how angry she was at Shepard and his forces for the deaths of her teammates and the devastation of the Citadel's forces, a sliver of doubt had wormed its way into the pit of her stomach. She had worked for the Council for years; she knew what they were like.

They preferred to know as little as possible about the Spectre's operations. They didn't want to be confronted with the cold hard facts that their "right arm" dealt with every day. To them, ignorance truly was bliss.

It wasn't a stretch for her to imagine them ignoring a threat this big. It simply conflicted with how they wanted to view the galaxy. It conflicted with their picture of a rosy, enlightened society held together by understanding words and compassionate promises.

"I want to see that proof Garrus," she said finally. "I want to see the proof that these Reapers exist. I want to see for myself what you say you've seen."

"Right this way," he replied.

/\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

The Council stared at the holographic image of Shepard displayed in the corner of their conference room. A mixture of hatred and fear played across councilor Valern's face while councilor Tevos and her salarian counterpart gaped in disbelief.

Though Farla was surprised, something about Shepard's appearance seemed almost destined. All this time he had been in control; all this time he had pulled the strings like a master puppeteer. Somehow appearing in the turian Hierarchy's most secure facility seemed like child's play to the man that had tricked the galaxy's most stubborn and self-defeating government to commit to total war.

"Shepard!" councilor Valern exclaimed with feigned confidence, a hint of question buried in the bravado. "How did you-"

"You have viruses in our systems," Farla interrupted at his sudden realization. With geth interrupting a heavily secured communications link during the evacuation of the Citadel, anomalous resource usage on his ship's computers, and Shepard's avatar appearing in the middle of one of the most network-secure rooms on Palaven it was the only explanation that Farla could see.

Shepard smirked at him, not unkindly, and said, "No, I have geth in your systems. I have to say fleet admiral I'm impressed with your resourcefulness. I fully expected to have to explain myself here but you figured it out on your own."

"You have geth in our systems?!" councilor Valern demanded, breaking the Council's silence.

Shepard turned his smile on the councilor. As it shifted targets, it changed, becoming more derisive, "Yes councilor, I do."

Councilor Tevos finally looked away from Shepard's figure and stared accusingly at Farla, "You allowed geth on board your ship?"

Shepard's laughter drew their attention back to him before Farla could respond. "Councilor there are geth in your systems for the same reason that you 'escaped'" Shepard mockingly emphasized with air quotes before he continued, "Captain Risha mirrored a drive on an uncharted planet that contained two things: information that would lead her and her team directly to you, and several hundred thousand geth runtimes.

"The STG's own AI did the rest," he said. He ignored all indignant replies from the Council and simply stared expectantly at Farla and Di'ala.

Di'ala asked the obvious question, "Why would the STG's AI help the geth?"

"It turns out that it's significantly easier to convince an AI of the Reaper threat than it is to convince some organics," Shepard replied flatly, the answer obviously waiting for the question. "Something about their strictly logical perception makes them more receptive to evidence."

Farla simply leaned forward and rested his chin on his crossed hands. It made sense. A perverted sort of sense, but sense nevertheless. Killing all those people was the most ruthless thing Farla had ever witnessed a man in uniform do but he was beginning to see why it was necessary.

The Council refused to act on actionable intelligence. They refused to dig deeper into the situation despite their vast intelligence gathering capabilities. They chose to ignore the warning signs; to ignore everything their eyes and ears presented them with. They willingly put the lives of trillions of civilians at risk just so they could see a rosier picture of the galaxy.

"Why Shepard?" Farla asked. Though he could see the most logical explanation for Shepard's actions, Farla needed to confirm his suspicions.

"I think you know why Admiral," Shepard replied.

"I want to hear you say it," Farla replied. "Indulge me."

Shepard smiled at him before responding, "I needed to get the council moving. I needed to make them prepare. They wouldn't accept the Reapers were real and refused to act. I did it all to save the galaxy from these stubborn fools' inaction."

"You wanted us to believe your delusional ramblings!" Valern shouted. "How could you possibly expect us to act on such idiotic nonsense?!"

Farla ignored the councilor just as Shepard did. Di'ala however couldn't keep silent.

"_Councilor,_ we just rescued you from Shepard's _delusional ramblings!_" she said. "That _idiotic nonsense_ nearly killed you _twice_! How can you dismiss the threat this enemy presents? The largest fleets in Citadel history were unable to destroy even _one _warship!"

"Fleet Admiral, I want you to devote all resources to capturing this madman," councilor Valern demanded.

"Are you serious?!" Admiral Di'ala exclaimed. She stared in disbelief at the man.

Farla didn't even react. He'd seen it coming. Frustration and anger broiled beneath the surface of his calm demeanor, the only evidence of its existence a slight frown on his face.

The council couldn't be persuaded. They were too focused on their own personal hatred of Shepard, however well deserved it may have been, to listen to his explanations. They couldn't see past the machinations at the man pulling the strings. Farla's arguments did nothing to convince them, and they were a liability while in command of the galaxy's largest unified military force.

Di'ala glanced at Farla for his reaction. After a brief moment, he returned her stare. He could tell that she saw determination instead of resignation in his eyes. _Asari always were good at learning alien body language_, he thought to himself.

"Councilors, I am hereby placing you under military arrest," Farla declared, staring at each of the councilors in turn. The surprise on their faces was almost satisfying to see. "You have proven yourselves unfit for duty in a time of war."

He glanced at Di'ala. Without her support, Farla could never carry out that sentence. The politics of the galaxy were heavily stacked against him. He ignored the indignant, almost petulant protests of the Council and the holographic image of Shepard and focused exclusively on his subordinate. He watched as a myriad of emotions quickly played across her face.

As defiance settled across her features, Farla spoke softly, so that only she could hear, "I know what you're thinking," he said to her. "Humanity's rise to power all over again."

"Yeah, that's pretty much it," she said, her determination faltering slightly.

"I want you to trust me. For once, just trust me," he replied. "I know exactly what the non-human military personnel think of me. I know exactly how thin the line I'm toeing is."

The Council's protests grew louder and their attempts to contact outside sources for assistance more frantic. Farla distractedly recognized that Shepard had probably disabled all outside communication and locked down the room. _He really is a crafty bastard, _he thought.

Di'ala looked at her leaders and back at Farla several times. He could see her indecision; to side with a human she despised or with an incompetent government in a time of war. Farla didn't envy her that decision.

For him, it was simple. He wasn't concerned with the politics anymore; he'd seen what the enemy was capable of. He understood what they represented and what the galaxy had to lose.

The races of the galaxy needed to function as a cohesive whole. It needed to work toward defeating the new threat and not get distracted by a witch hunt.

Everything was in place for a massive counterattack; Shepard had made sure of that.

Di'ala finally looked back at Farla. She stared hard into his eyes, searching for any hint of deception or ambition. What she ultimately saw Farla never knew but finally she said, "Alright Fleet Admiral. We'll do it your way for now."

Farla sat up in his chair and activated his omnitool. As expected, he was able to contact his ship and through it the entirety of the fleet. Quickly thinking of a way to phrase it he said, "Attention all personnel. I, Fleet Admiral Richard Farla, hereby place the Citadel Council under arrest pending investigation for gross negligence in a time of war and am declaring Martial Law.

"Admiral Tirulius and Sirul, please report to the Hierarchy Capitol conference room immediately."

He then glanced at Shepard's image and contacted the guards outside the room. As he suspected, the line was open. He narrowed his omnitool's pickup range to prevent them from hearing the outcries of the council and absently wished he could do the same to his ears.

"Captain Raulius, please escort the Council to the nearest prison cell," he said calmly.

The man entered and immediately glanced around the room. Seeing nothing but the Council and the two officers, he looked meaningfully at Admiral Di'ala. Farla thanked whatever deities existed when she confidently nodded her head.

Farla looked silently at the now inactive comm. terminal and stood to leave.


	13. Epilogue

"Sir, the Normandy is requesting permission to dock," Lieutenant Fallarn said over Farla's headset.

"Permission granted," Farla said. "God knows I never thought I'd say that." He murmured under his breath and off mic.

"Salamis, anything I should know about?" he asked the AI that had until recently worked for the STG. Apparently, no one had ever given it a name. Given the way in which it had proven its independence, Farla didn't really think that was right.

"No admiral. There have been no hacking attempts and the geth routines present when we entered the system left the moment the Normandy arrived. As promised," it replied.

"Good," Farla said. He obviously couldn't fully trust the AI given the things it had done, but he knew there was value in anyone that was willing to defy idiotic orders to save a galaxy.

He waited as the Normandy approached, watching on his omnitool's headset as it slowed and maneuvered to dock.

The Normandy docked at his ship's starboard docking clamp, as instructed. It seemed as though Shepard were doing exactly what he said he'd do. Which, given everything that had happened, meant next to nothing.

Farla stood opposite the airlock door. Arrayed around him were two dozen Special Forces soldiers from all three major species and four combat Spectres. "Next to nothing" was a little too insignificant for Farla's tastes.

But he definitely wasn't prepared for what he saw when the airlock door hissed open.

"Captain_ Risha?"_ He breathed. In front of him stood the supposedly dead Spectre. _Stood,_ on a prosthetic limb that looked unnervingly like a geth leg. He'd seen the footage of her injury; it had blown her leg clean off.

She snapped a crisp salute, both boots clacking audibly on the metal deck, and said. "Councilor, permission to come aboard?"

He looked past her at the man behind. It was him. Shepard, the Shepard, unarmed and in civilian clothes. A hoodie in fact. Farla would have been insulted by the informality if Shepard hadn't been dishonorably discharged and considered public enemy number one for a year. Somehow he couldn't feel offended by him wearing a hoodie.

Staring intently at Shepard he said, "Permission granted. Captain Risha, report to the med bay immediately. Spectre Haniston will show you the way. I'm assuming you're ready for active duty?"

"Yes sir, I am," she replied.

"Good. I want a full report on everything that's happened since we last met. You're dismissed," he commanded.

"Yes sir," she answered. With that she joined the only human Spectre present and followed him down a side corridor.

Farla continued to stare at Shepard. Farla knew he needed to hear what he had to say but at this point he didn't even know where to start.

"Admiral, might I suggest we move to a conference room?" Shepard said; a wry smirk on his face.

It was only then Farla realized he'd been standing silently for a full minute. "Of course," he responded. He motioned at the soldiers arrayed around him to follow and moved to continue down the corridor.

Shepard fell into step beside him and the bulk of the escort situated themselves partly between and mostly behind the two men.

They made their way through the vast ship, twisting through it's multiple cross corridors until they came to a glass lined conference room. Farla gestured for Shepard to enter first and then followed him through the doorway.

Farla would have liked to say he had the courage to speak with Shepard alone. He would have liked to say that he trusted that he could defend himself if the need arose.

But he couldn't. Shepard was both unpredictable and incredibly skilled. He was the first human Spectre not out of political favor but by being better than every other Spectre who had ever served. His martial skill bludgeoned his way to Spectre status through several political stone walls.

So no, Farla did not dismiss the soldiers that had followed them in. They lined every wall, weapons drawn and not quite raised. Each of them had a line of sight of Shepard as he took a seat at one end of the table.

Farla took the opposite. He tried to decide which of his many questions he wanted to ask first. 'What happened to Captain Risha' was now off the table, given the circumstances, so that left the next biggest question that had bothered him since his realization during the Reapers' attack on the Citadel.

There was some math that didn't add up.

"Alright Shepard; I played your game. I can see why what you did was somewhat necessary, given the Council's resistance to see the truth," Farla began. "But something's been bothering me."

He paused while Shepard looked back at him, polite interest written across his face.

"If you had the resources to build a fleet of 100,000 geth warships and could destroy almost an entire fleet," Farla continued, "Why did you need us to mobilize so badly that you'd do so?"

"Because I don't," Shepard replied calmly.

"What do you mean you don't?" Farla demanded. "You obviously do!"

"Two thirds of that fleet was entirely comprised of dummy ships," Shepard replied, "Just guns, thrusters, and really big rocks. They didn't even have FTL drives; the quarians and geth had to figure out a way for two of them to piggy back on the FTL bubble of a single ship. I thought it was pretty impressive actually."

"_What?_" Farla whispered. "Even the _fleet _was a ruse?"

"Yes it was," Shepard responded matter-of-factly.

Farla took a moment to try and process that. To reconcile it with the events that had transpired. "You must have had at least that many pilots then," He asked, "where are they?"

Shepard shook his head. "You don't understand the geth very well Admiral. To the geth, a star ship is just another body. There was no real need for each ship to be 'manned.'"

"Are you saying those ships didn't have anyone controlling them?" Farla asked incredulously.

"Of course not," Shepard answered. "I'm saying that most of those ships didn't have geth runtimes present on board. They were being controlled remotely. The server clusters necessary to house geth runtimes are costly to build and we were planning on demolishing the spare ships after the battle to divert those resources elsewhere. However you can't recycle those server clusters, I'm told, so it would have been a waste of valuable resources.

"The truth is that one third of that fleet was in control of every ship and every gun," he continued. "They were tasked to capacity. If they hadn't rendered your systems useless, then they wouldn't have been able to maneuver well enough to survive."

Farla closed his eyes and bowed his head at this news. All this time, they'd assumed that Shepard had the means to take them on. All this time, they'd assumed that he was a big enough threat to justify the enormous expense used to rebuild the fleets.

And all this time it had all been a bluff. One huge, costly, incredibly effective bluff. It was almost awe-inspiring, to see the fruits of his efforts from this side, to know what it meant going forward.

It was a strategic master stroke if ever there was one. He looked up at Shepard with new eyes. It had been an impressive feat to manipulate the council to do what was necessary, especially given the costs to Shepard personally, but to know how much he'd accomplished with so little was something else entirely. To convince a galaxy that you weren't just a threat but a major one; one that could go toe to toe with an entire combined military despite being able to do nothing of the sort. That was amazing.

"And Risha?" Farla asked, finding another inconsistency right then, "Why did you spare her? You killed her entire crew mercilessly; why spare her?"

"I killed most of her crew to prevent her from thinking clearly," Shepard responded. "A wise Krogan once told me that you should go after the people an enemy cares about and when they finally come after you acting stupid and reckless, you'll have a much easier time of taking them out.

"It hadn't been plan A, but Risha went to the Shadow Broker sooner than expected and our first base wasn't ready to do things properly," Shepard glanced around the room as he continued, "I needed her to succeed in rescuing the Council. But I needed them all out of the picture because I had been unable to set things up correctly. It would have looked far too suspicious," he continued. "Because they were smart. After they'd had a moment to think about it, they'd have realized that there was something seriously wrong about the rescue operation. And then they'd report that in their debriefing."

"I hadn't planned to kill any of them, but once they received the location of that first base much earlier than anticipated, I wasn't left a lot of options," He said, folding his hands in front of him. "I'd planned to spare the pilot, which would have been a risk, but the presence of their AI gave me a better, more thorough option."

A small knot forming in his stomach, Farla asked, "How did the AI give you a better option?"

"At some point during the trip from our first complex and our second on Neidus, the AI had preemptively insinuated itself into the controls of Risha's ship," Shepard replied. "Because the geth runtimes I had in place had also gotten into the ships systems, they were able to communicate this fact. Knowing that, it meant that the AI could return the ship to Citadel Space."

"So just like that?" Farla demanded quietly. "Just like that you rationalize away the life of a man you were going to spare? Just like that you justify murder of a man just doing his job?"

Farla had almost forgotten what kind of man he was sitting across from. In the rapid fire revelations of Shepard's motivations and the sheer scale of what he'd accomplished, he'd almost forgotten the actions themselves.

This was a man that could butcher C-Sec officers until their bodies piled up in front of an elevator. This was a man that could destroy hundreds of military ships for no reason other than to affect some grand plan for salvation. This was a man that could blow up an entire space station filled with civilians to deprive the enemy of a strategic advantage.

But now it was all back.

Even if Farla could recognize the results of the action, and even a modicum of its necessity, he couldn't let himself forget how _wrong_ it all was.

"Admiral, quite a lot was at stake," Shepard responded. "If even a shred of doubt existed about the strength of my forces, if even a _sliver _of confidence in the military forces of the time was left, the whole plan would fall apart.

"I didn't feel a shred of pleasure at their deaths," Shepard continued quietly, looking down at his hands. The tone in his voice gave credence to his words, and it struck Farla like a hammer on an anvil; loud and forceful, despite the softness of his voice. "But far too much was at stake. More than you can possibly imagine.

"This wasn't just about stopping the Reapers from destroying our civilization, a civilization comprised of trillions of people; it was about breaking a cycle that had gone on for millions, even billions of years," he said, looking up at Farla and meeting his eyes. "It isn't just a fight for our survival but for every civilization that will follow and the vengeance of every civilization that preceded us."

"I balanced the lives of all those innocent civilians and military servicemen against the lives of our entire galaxy and every life that would be snuffed out by the Reapers after us if we failed."

"And the latter won," he said, steel in his voice and defiance on his face.

Farla stared Shepard in the eye for a while. He looked for any sort of doubt or insincerity. He needed to know whether the man across from him was a madman or a genius, a conman or leader.

And though he searched for anything that would contradict what Shepard had said, he couldn't find anything. There was a clear consistency to his actions, ruthless as all hell though it was. To Farla the men and women he'd killed were too many to count.

But were their deaths really worth the salvation of a galaxy, now and in the future? If one man died to save a hundred, it was considered worthwhile. The premise was the same, simply on a much larger scale.

But Farla had a hard time anthropomorphizing the galaxy and people that hadn't even been born yet. All he could see inside his head was the pile of corpses at the top of the Citadel tower; the men and women taking cover behind it.

"What am I supposed to do with you Shepard?" Farla asked. "Am I supposed to reinstate you? Grant you your Spectre status again? Imprison you?"

Shepard smiled wryly and said, "None of the above. You have your forces to command Admiral; I have mine. We can work apart and die or we can work together and _maybe _succeed. That part's up to you."

"What forces?" Farla asked. "You just said your fleet was nowhere near the size of ours."

"I have much more than that," Shepard replied cryptically. "It'll all be in Captain Risha's debriefing."

"You're not going to tell me?" Farla demanded.

"You wouldn't believe me," Shepard replied coolly. "Are we done?"

Farla looked hard at Shepard. The truth was he had a slew of other questions he wanted to ask, but he also knew that time was short. The skies above Palaven weren't going to stay empty for long. Reports of Batarian refugees were trickling in and it seemed as though the Reapers were targeting homeworlds. Given its location, Palaven was going to be next.

"Yes, for now," Farla said. "But I'm going to need to know everything about your troop strength if we're going to work together to do this. And you'll need to take my lead."

"On that first part, it will all be in Risha's debriefing. We made sure to give her exact figures for everything," Shepard said. "On the second part, you'll have to remember that I and my forces are our own entity. I work with you, not under you. I have far more experience fighting these things than you and have a few ideas on how to get it done."

Farla didn't like that idea at all. But he supposed that there wasn't much he could do about it. "Fine. You're dismissed Shepard."

As Shepard got up and made his way to the door, Farla couldn't decide whether what Shepard had done had been the right thing. He couldn't decide whether siding with him in open defiance of what he wanted to do was the right thing. But he supposed he didn't really have to; the war with the Reapers had just begun and, if past experience was any indication, it would be a long and terrible fight. Farla knew he'd need every resource he could get his hands on to win.

Even if that meant siding with a potentially insane, potential genius war criminal to do it.

But then, history is written by the victor. Maybe, at the end of all this, Shepard would turn out to be the hero.

/_Author's Note:_

_It's finished. I'm not totally satisfied with all of it (and am in fact pretty unsatisfied with some of it) and I never, ever expected to actually finish this story._

_You see, I started this concept way, way back. It started out as Whatever it Takes on this very account (you can read it and compare, hehe) sometime shortly after Mass Effect 2 released. I did it to try and get the damn thing out of my head so I could go to sleep (it didn't help) and as a result that version's… less that mediocre. _

_Then, after finishing A Means to an End (again, on this same account) I decided to rewrite the previous story because underneath the absolutely Spartan writing was what I believed to be a great concept._

_However, it was a bit of a chore to write this story. For the vast majority of it I just wasn't feeling the spark. Plus I lost Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 due to a file saving issue (opened from email, saved to temp file, Doh) and had to rewrite it all._

_As a result I progressed at a snails pace until around the time when Mass Effect 3 got released._

_Keep in mind that I'm not the sort of guy that spends a whole lot of time doing revisionist writing. I don't get much satisfaction from alternate history writing, and I don't like doing ANYTHING that doesn't make sense within the universe I'm presented with._

_So I knew that I had to finish this story before Mass Effect 3 came out. Because I had built this story to fit within the game world between ME2 and ME3. I had specifically designed it to make perfect sense within that timeline. I didn't want it to be a "What I'd do If…" story I wanted it to be exactly what I'd do._

_But as soon as ME3 released whatever I'd written wouldn't make sense because there would be new canon material that would directly contradict it._

_I got most of the way through Chapter 12 before ME3 released. As you can see, more needed to be said._

_And then I beat Mass Effect 3. Once. For context, I beat ME2 on two platforms with two legal versions of the game a combined 14 times. I own all the content DLC for ME1 and 2._

_I'm going to go on record here in this most prestigious of venues and say that I didn't like the ending of ME3 very much. Wasn't out of my mind mad at it either, but it didn't work for me. _

_What did make me mad was Bioware's actions and the media's slander. That pissed me off._

_I was done with Mass Effect. I haven't played any of them since, haven't touched the books I own, and I seriously considered disposing of my copies of the games. I got banned from the forums (for a non-ending related offense during one of their banning sprees) and had washed my hands of the franchise._

_I tell you this so that you Kris and you ShadowCub fully understand my meaning when I say this: The only reason I finished this story was because you two commented on it. I was on here looking to see if a completely unrelated book series had a page when I saw your posts. I don't frequent this site at all._

_Now I'm not saying that what you said inspired me to continue. Really it was just because you commented at all. I would have though this story was buried far too deep in this site's logs to find. I also just couldn't abide by anyone having an actual interest in my story and me ignoring it._

_So, here it is. I hope you liked it._


End file.
